100 Miles With The Endurance Riders At The World Equestrian Games

Sep 01, 2010 No Comments by Jackie

I’m sure I’m not alone in daydreaming occasionally about how wonderful it would be to saddle up Ace and take off for a long cross-country ride. Trotting and cantering through the woods, across the fields, stopping to rest by the streams we encounter. Ambling along, enjoying the beautiful weather and scenery with my best equine friend.

Lucky for them, that’s what endurance riders do!

Well, sort of. Considering they’re competing and have long strenuous journeys in which the condition of their horse is paramount, it’s probably not as relaxing as all that. About the only thing I know about endurance racing is that Arabians are best at it. But the more I learn, the more I think it has to be one of the most difficult horse sports in which to train and compete.

Here’s the basic rundown you need to know about endurance in preparation for the World Equestrian Games coming later this month.

Overview of Endurance Competition

Endurance competition stems from the days when horseback riding to get places was a necessity, not just a past-time. Fast, fit horses were prized for their ability to travel long distances and stay sound and healthy. As in the days of necessity, today’s competitive endurance horses are required to go a specific route in the fastest time while passing the vet checks along the way.

The courses are cross-country across a variety of terrain and natural obstacles including woods, creeks, hills, and ditches. Most often, national and public parks are utilized for their trails.

As with eventing, endurance has several levels of competition available, allowing competitors to work their way up.

1*: 50 miles
2*: 75 miles
3* (international level): 160 kilometers/100 miles

The American Endurance Ride Conference, the US governing body, also organizes local 25-mile endurance competitions for riders and horses just getting started in the sport.

The condition of the horse is key in endurance competition. To ensure the horses are healthy, they are required to stop at several vet checks on course. There, the horses get a chance to rest, eat, and drink. They must recover fully (heart and breathing rates) and be sound before they are allowed to go back out on course. Once the vets have deemed them recovered and sound, they have a set time that they must rest before proceeding. So, a horse who reaches the vet check 10 minutes faster than another but takes longer to recover, will end up behind. Thus, key in endurance is getting your horse fit and strategizing how fast or slow they need to go to maintain a fast time yet recover quickly. A horse who is fit will therefore save a lot of time at the vet checks and have a distinct advantage.

Horses also must pass a vet check before the race and deemed fit to compete, and must pass another vet check at the end.

Endurance riders have ground crews who assist them at the vet check points. They come armed with cool water to sponge off the horse, food, water to drink, and spare equipment in case anything breaks.

Over 90% of the horses who compete in endurance are Arabians or Half-Arabians. They are built for stamina and have the sturdiness and sure-footedness to handle the varied terrain.

Endurance at the 2010 World Equestrian Games

Endurance at WEG is a championship level 100 mile course. It’s taken some creative planning, as there aren’t any public lands or national parks near the Kentucky Horse Park to utilize for that much course. The course designers for WEG have needed to get permission to use private property to build out the 100-mile trek.

Many courses do have loops built in to meet the required distance, but a well-designed course has lots of variety and is simple logistically. It’s very important that rider’s crews and race support staff can easily access the competitors in case anything goes wrong.

The 100 mile course is all done in one day. The time allowed varies at different competition, but is expected to be in the neighborhood of 16-18 hours for WEG. The winning times at the recent endurance championships in Malayasia were between 8-9 hours.

There will be vet checks every 40 km. Riders will have 30 minutes at each checkpoint to present their horse to the attending veterinarian. The horses must recover and be acceptable within that time or they’ll be disqualified.

Team and Individual Medals

Team and individual medals will be awarded for endurance competition at WEG. Each nation will send 5 or 6 total riders for each country. The Chef de Equipe chooses which four of the riders will count towards the team competition. The endurance 100-mile ride will happen just once to determine both sets of medals.

There will also be a best condition award which is based on speed and vet score.

WEG Spectators

Endurance is unfortunately not much of a spectator sport as it’s a long race with little access to the course. Spectators usually get to see the beginning and end of the race, and sometimes can camp out at the vet check areas. From what I heard early on, there will be a jumbotron set up on the KY Horse park grounds that tracks the competitors on course via GPS, so you can at least see a little dot showing where your favorite rider is.