Actually, humans are better runners than horses over some distances, and in some situations. Over short distances, humans can accelerate very well, and turn well.
The relevance of this intrusion of facts? The narrator is free to assume that a particular situation is such as to favour one or the other, assuming that their skills are actually named differently, if they want. Or not. Skills are only presumed equal.
Which is another way of saying that in the end, the narrator runs the game the way they like. Is anyone surprised?
Personally, though, I think there is a subtle difference that is being missed here. There are rules that will lead to game balance problems if abused, and rules that lead to game balance problems if used (as intended). I agree with Nick that HW contains some of the latter, and this is a Bad Thing. The former, however, are pretty much inevitable in any relatively flexible game - making a game that is truly flexible, and prohibits characters that are no fun to have in a game, is pretty damn hard, and ultimately not as good an idea as having the narrator rule out things that they think will make their game less fun.
Cheers David
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