The World Is Smaller Now

A couple of months ago I was contacted by the Longriders Guild, an organisation of people who do long distance horse treks, exploring our world in an old fashioned way in this age of cars and planes. To become a Longrider, one has to complete an authenticated trip of over one thousand miles on horseback, no mean accomplishment. I'd love to be one, but I don't really see it in the cards at this point. I've followed the Guild on their website for a number of years and have corresponded with riders who have traveled through Egypt. Basha and CuChullaine O'Reilly have built a phenomenal data base of riders who have accomplished these long rides through history and the present, created a publishing company for books about equestrian travel, manage a marvelous source of information for prospective travelers, and along the way get to do some traveling themselves...planning a round the world trip on horseback in the near future.

The Guild's reason for contacting me recently, since I'm not a Longrider, was to get my take on an event that they had been consulted about by a company that specialises in adventure tourism. The Adventurists, a British tourism company, has previously specialised in signing up people who were willing to buy a trashed out car in one part of Africa to make their way in a quasi-rally to another part. Since the company makes a serious show of NOT supplying support for the people who sign up...after all, the danger is all part of the fun, don't you know?...this is a "vacation" for the seriously addicted to adrenaline. But this winter, The Adventurists decided to branch out a bit and to offer a new holiday...a thousand mile horserace in Mongolia! They were looking to the Longriders Guild for help and support. My initial response was that these people were utterly out of their minds. How were people going to care for the horses? Did they realise how small Mongolian ponies are? A car enthusiast can fix a radiator if it breaks, but no one can fix a lame or sick horse. I really couldn't believe that they were serious.

Needless to say this support was not forthcoming. The situation that has been set up is that about 25 participants have paid roughly $5 thou each for the privilege of being landed in Mongolia where a charity who will receive a hefty donation has apparently rounded up 800 Mongolian ponies for the use of the participants in a thousand mile race across the Mongolian steppes. When the Guild first told me that the Adventurists were planning this, my return email suggested was that it was totally insane and being an optimist, I couldn't see how this would ever get off the ground. The course is utterly littered with landmines..figuratively speaking.

I live in Egypt and take horses trekking in some relatively inhospitable areas, from a horse's point of view, so some of the problems that I could see with the plan were those of language (how are these travelers going to communicate with anyone that they might meet or need assistance from? Each one is traveling alone and in competition with the others.), terrain (the area is without roads, signposts or even many settlements and Mongolia isn't precisely known for its balmy climate), experience (experienced horsemen look at an "opportunity" like this and laugh while walking away...most of these people are novices). And finally, my experience seeing what can happen in long distance races for a cash purse made me pray that the project would never get off the ground. Back in 2000 to 2002 when the UAE was making a huge push to introduce the sport of endurance racing to many of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, there were many races for sizeable purses in countries where the locals had no idea of what was involved in traveling on a horse for a distance of over about 10 miles....and many, many, many dead horses during and after the races.

Emails have been flying back and forth for a number of months while we all waited for The Adventurists to suddenly regain sanity regarding this race, but this has not happened. Apparently the race is on, the participants have ponied up their entrance fee (to use an unforgivable pun) and possibly the biggest equestrian disaster to hit the news in recent time is in the offing. No efforts have been made for this to be sanctioned under international rules with the appropriate supervision by stewards and vets. In a serious endurance race, it is required that horses pass a veterinary check at the beginning, the end, and at stages throughout the race, generally not more that 25 miles apart. The horses' condition is of the utmost concern and if the horse is not fit to continue the rider and horse are disqualified. There are NO veterinarians involved in this project at all. A group of relatively inexperienced riders are on their own.

I would suggest that you go to the website linked to the title of this post to see the research that the Guild has conducted in their efforts to convince The Adventurists that while dropping off clueless auto enthusiasts in uncomfortable places might endanger the humans involved, they have no right to endanger the horses of Mongolia in this way. There are a number of petitions that can be signed, letters that can be sent. We are all hoping that someone with a degree of sense will block this madness. The world is a smaller place now and we are all responsible for it.

Read http://www.thelongridersguild.com/mongolia.htm




copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Learning to Slow Down

Saturday was the Kentucky Derby, not an Egyptian event but horse people are horse people world wide and we were all horrified to see that the young mare who came in second had to be euthanized on the race track at the end of the race. As someone who raises and trains horses, I find this particularly upsetting. I still remember so clearly the death of Ruffian, one of the most spectacular mares in racing in a horrendous racetrack breakdown in the late 70's. I don't believe in keeping horses in glass cases lest they get a scratch, but it is so definitely time for the equestrian industries to clean up their act.

By equestrian industries, I mean not just the thoroughbred flat track racing industry in the US, but also other equestrian industries as well. We have the tourism stables here in Nazlit Semman where young horses are shipped in quantity to be sold on, to be used for tourist rides at the Giza pyramids, and all too often to be injured, overworked, and improperly cared for. In Egypt and much of the Middle East we have both Arabian and Thoroughbred flat track racing and we also have the heavily industrialised FEI endurance racing, which is actually not much more than flat track racing but on incredibly long distances. What all of these industries share in common is the fact that they are making money through the use of horses but are not looking out for the best care of their raw materials...the horses.

Horses are not machines. They might not be the rocket scientists of the animal world, but they are social animals who know their friends and family, they are capable of extraordinary care for the puny humans who presume to climb on them and boss them around, and they do much of what they do for humans out of an amazing trust, misplaced as it may be. The flat track industry is probably regulated more by the customer support for the events than anything else and the editorial from the New York Times that the title of this post links to points out that the industry needs to stop and take a hard look at the way that the race horses are bred, trained and raced. People will get tired of seeing lovely horses die at very young ages. After all, there is no reason that race horses can't wait to race until they are four, five or even...GASP!....six. Most serious horse people know that horses get better as they get older, like humans, and that they aren't even really mature until they are about seven years old. I don't start my horses under saddle until they are four because the spine of the young horse hasn't stopped growing until then. They have plenty to learn in terms of training and socialisation before they handle a rider, and when they do, they have a pretty good idea of what is going on and how to deal with it. The main reason for racing horses young is to get back the buyer's investment as quickly as possible. Big business strikes again. Wake up guys! It isn't called the Sport of Kings for nothing...it's called that because only kings could afford it. No one ever made a lot of money on horses..they are how you make a small fortune out of a big one.

Endurance racing and three day eventing are theoretically amateur sports, or at least what passes for amateur these days. In the old days of my youth, an amateur sport was one that you did for fun, not to win a cash prize or to make a living. The International Equestrian Federation (the FEI) is the umbrella group for the national equestrian federations that are supposed to be overseeing these amateur equestrian sports. According to their website, they are supposed to be be the guardian of the welfare of the horses participating in FEI disciplines (show jumping, eventing, dressage, endurance, driving, and so on). They are supposed to be there to be the spokesman for the silent partners who give everything they have to the sport, including, all too often, their lives. Unfortunately, the FEI makes its money from the very sports that they are supposed to be supervising.

Its income comes from the fees it charges those who are putting on FEI events, to which a portion of the prize money (what happened to the amateurs?) that is offered at the events is added, as is a fee for drug testing and supervising personnel and so on. It is, therefore, in the corporate interest of the FEI to have big events with lots of sponsorship and television rights and excitement. Eventing horses and riders have been paying a very heavy price for this lately with a number of deaths in the last few weeks, including two horses euthanized and two riders injured (one, Laine Ashker, very seriously...her horse Frodo was one put down, a dream horse who had been in the film Lord of The Rings). At some point, one would imagine that if the governing body were really governing, they would take a long hard look at something other than the balance sheet. (By the way, the charges for each service are available online on the FEI website at http://www.fei.org/FEI/FEI_Headquarters/Pages/Finance_AND_Admin.aspx)

In the end, a major source of the cancer, as I see it, comes from the push to make equestrian sports television friendly spectator sports. Personally, I don't want to watch horses on television. I'd rather be riding.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Ghost Riders In The Fog

Last Friday our local riding group had a 40 km ride...in the fog. Spring weather in Egypt is as changeable as it is in other places and while it was clear when we got up to feed horses at 5 am, by 6:30 you couldn't see more than about 20 metres. Our ride was in the desert, an area not known for its landmarks at the best of times, so this looked to be an interesting experience. Seventeen horses and riders gathered at Dr. Ali Abdel Rahim's stud farm at the edge of the desert for the start. Horses were checked by local vets to be sure that they were ready to go, we were given a quick briefing, told to follow the splashes of white powder in the desert and then given leave to depart.
The trail led from the edge of the farmland up the hill to a plateau that is used by the sand miners who excavate sand and gravel there, leaving winding trails around holes and hills of unclaimed gravel. From the starting point though, the plateau couldn't even be made out. The usual riders in more of a hurry moved off quickly, but Cristina and I took our time along with a couple of other women who were new to the group. We ride in the desert here all the time so the likelihood of our getting lost in the fog was fairly low, but the other pair were strangers and we were a little concerned.
The horses moved off happily up the hill. I was riding Dooby a 7 year old gelding who has an enormous fast walk and long legs that dwarf those of Cristina's gelding Nayzak who is rather slight but very fast. Small as he is, Nayzak is faster than Dooby when we let them really move out, so they are actually very well matched. The other two women were riding horses that walked so slowly it was rather painful. On one hand the trail was marked, but not all that well and Cristina and I felt rather guilty just riding off into the fog and leaving them.
The faster riders had taken off quickly leaving us with an empty desert spotted randomly with some hoofprints, the odd tire track and some white powder. Over the plateau, the trail followed some dirt tracks and the trick was to spot the spot that showed whether to turn right or left, but about 8 km into the track, the trail came out onto a wide open space where the riders could have taken any direction. This part of the track was one that had us a bit confused because we were coming into a familiar wadi from an unfamiliar point, and with the still clinging fog, it was hard to get our bearings. We trotted on, checking behind us for the other women every so often, figuring that at least they could get an idea where the trail went by seeing us in distance.
As we circled one of the flat tabletop hills at the end of the wadi to head south to the homeward stretch of the trail, the sun began sneaking through the fog and the landscape was much easier to make out. We stopped worrying so much about the newcomers following us and let the boys out to stretch their legs. The leaders were just cantering along merrily quite a ways ahead of us; we had no concern that we might catch up. In fact on the way in Cristina did some quick calculations on time and realised that she wouldn't be able to go out for the second loop because she had to meet her family for a lunch later and the time would simply be too short. Having decided that we wouldn't be doing the second loop, when we ran into an old friend on the trail who wasn't in the ride, we stopped to chat much to the confusion of the two women who had been following us up to that point. Well, it was all about fun anyway.

We did warn the organisers that they were going to have to get either a drag rider to keep tabs on the last riders or someone in a jeep starting from the next ride. Cristina and I have been bringing along some horses and monitoring their recoveries and this was the last checkout ride. Dooby has an irregular heartbeat and can't be relied on to recover properly to the needed 64 beats per minute despite the fact that he loves the competition and can cruise happily for ages. Nayzak, on the other hand, drops to 40 beats per minute quickly, making him a good partner for either Nazeer or Bunduq. Next time, no last place for us.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani