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Race Day in Egypt part one - long



Well, as they say, it's all over except for the shouting, although that
might go on for a while. Last May I had the rather dubious honor of managing
a 100 km ride in Egypt that was sponsored by the Equestrian Federation of
Dubai. Egyptian riders (and ride managers) were rank amateurs, having had
their first exposure to endurance only a few months earlier, and we found
the experience of international competition rather interesting in a Chinese
curse sort of way. That is, we learned rather more about some things that we
would have preferred not to learn. This year, after a fun ride put on by a
local endurance organisation that is still undergoing the process of
formation (Egypt invented bureaucracy about the same time as the pyramid),
the Egyptian Equestrian Federation (EEF), our local FEI chapter, started
organising a series of rides with the aid, once more of Dubai. The first two
showed a fairly decent learning curve, as only a couple of people from Dubai
were on hand to help, and the EEF had been almost exclusively involved in
show jumping up to that time. Then came the BIG RACE.

This year due to unforseen and highly unappreciated changes in my lifestyle,
I have barely managed to work my own horses, much less get seriously into
race management, so I opted to find a new role.....crew. Another woman took
my ride manager spot (I guess we breed female masochists here) and the date
was set for April 21. After experiences last year, Somaya made sure that
there was shade for the local horses as well as the visiting teams, and the
local group designed a course that would hopefully not cause hazards by
running horses through local desert football pitches. Dubai very graciously
sent in their computerised vet in booths, the clinic and many of their vets
and judges to lend the FEI authority stamp to the affair. We had riders and
horses  from Jordan, some Kuwaitis on local horses, horses and riders from
Abu Dhabi, and some Syrians, as well as our local riders. The overall result
was rather interesting, again in the Chinese curse fashion.

The course was only changed in a fairly minor way at the request of Dubai,
so the young man who helped set flags probably only had to go in for a
couple hours work at 10:30 pm last night. This is a distinct improvement
over last year's ride in that we had moderately accurate maps available to
riders and crew this year. Last year the track was laid from about midnight
to 2 am and maps were out of the question. We had four loops of decreasing
length from about 35 km to 14 km.

The vet check on Friday went smoothly with a minor hitch when the EEF
official who had collected the signup sheets for the locals realised that
he'd left them locked in an office, so we had to redo them. At least people
didn't have to pay the LE 500 to 700 that registration for the race cost
them. The variation is because they had to have either qualified in two
previous rides or pay the ride fees for them. That is a pretty steep price
in a country with such low wages as Egypt, but as everywhere, FEI rides are
more costly to put on.  The local group EERA (Egyptian Endurance Riding
Association) has found that LE 100 per horse/rider combo is sufficient unto
the needs of the day, but we use local talent. We had the usual fun with our
overabundance of stallions, and I was left wondering when people would learn
to have mares vet in at one end of the 10 or so lanes with stallions for the
other end. The local group made a mental note to do just that at our future
rides. I was not present for the rider briefing, which was supposed to be
held at 5 or so, but by 7 I had to run home to fix dinner before going back
out to spend the night near the club to be on hand at 4 am. The minimum
speed was 11 km per hour, which should have given an 11 hour period for
completion, but they decided to apply the cut offs loop by loop, so the
actual allowed time was much shorter since you couldn't sort of average
things out.

We crew folk were on site by 4:30 to work out who would be where and I found
myself driving for a Jordanian woman, Ghislaine Aburagheb, whose son was her
crew. She had tried to rent one of the many 4 wheel drive cars on site, but
they were either reserved by or arranged to be rented to some of the riders
who were paying much higher prices. A few of our local horse owners were
offered relatively enormous sums to rent their horses to some of the
non-local riders, with damage bonuses for blown tendons....few took the
offers up and the only one that I know of to start was disqualified by a vet
early in the first loop. Didn't surprise me as I knew the horse, and he
hadn't been out of a box in months.

The day itself was gorgeous. At 5:30 am I was on top of the Japanese Hill (a
spot that has been under excavation by Japanese archaeologists every winter
for years) with Sharon Saare, Ghislaine's son and the daughter of a friend
watching for the first riders. As we watched, I got a call from a friend
whose daughters and a young friend were riding in the race. Her car had
broken down in the desert about 2 km from the start, so I woke up my poor,
long-suffering driver who collected my other Cherokee and came out to help
her. The first water stop was just under the hill. The start was fairly
fast, which made sense as the day promised to be hot. We followed around the
track, leapfrogging the riders as I cut through the desert to hit the water
stops so that Ghislaine's son could be on hand for his mother....who
actually didn't seem to need much help, but appreciated the company....and
to watch out for my friend's kids who fortunately were riding at the back of
the pack with Ghislaine. My driver appeared with the friend about halfway
through the first loop and we went on helping Ghislaine...sometimes the help
was making sure where the next flag was so she wouldn't get lost. This
wasn't so much of an issue on the first two loops but on the third there
were times when she really needed it.

After the first loop, it settled down into a race for the front runners and
a struggle to finish for the ordinary mortals.  The sand took its toll on
the horses and many of them were immeasurably calmer as they set out for the
second. By the third loop many of the local riders had fallen out, many
running out of time. I have to wonder how much the boredom factor counted in
for our horses who have been over every square centimeter of that desert a
million times. Ghislaine timed out on the third loop, but by then I was
being held captive by an irate radiator.
To be continued...

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net




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