Analysis of variables inherent to the dynamics of the practice of vaquejada to determine its influence on the result obtained in the competition

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate several attempts to knock down neats and to correlate the success obtained with actions performed by the horse/rider sets through an analysis of public domain videos of vaquejadas. Approximately 300 videos were considered, and the groups were evaluated according to the competition category, that is, amateur/aspirant and professional, and the animals used in the test, that is, pulling or tracking of the neat. It was found that for the pull set in the professional competition category, only the characteristics of directing the cow on the track, and the guiding behavior and positioning in the pull were significant (p<0.01), while for the amateur/aspirant category, the characteristics of remaining in the pull after falling of the cattle and of the behavior at the gate had an effect (p<0.01). The characteristic of remaining in the pull after the fall of the neats, in the category of professional pulling athletes, exists in greater prevalence during the competition with 85.3%, while the characteristic of directing the neat to the side of the track is performed by 87.6% of the competitors. For the set used to track the cattle, the values of the dimensions 1 and 2 were 96.56% and 3.43%, respectively, which is 99.9% of the total variance of the data based on those selected for the final result of “earn the ox”. The use of multiple diversity analysis in this study of variables associated with the vaquejada set proved to be quite advantageous, and there was not much variation in the elements obtained with a greater weight in the determination of the final result.