Foreign newbie part two

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

3. There were three trails in the race, (blue, white and red), and they all
started and ended at GMHA. But there were more vet checks along the trails
as well. The first trail was 22.5 miles (36.2 km) long, and it had a pulse
gate about halfway along. The horses left GMHA at 5 am and were expected to
reach the pulse gate sometime between 6 am and 7:40 am. After 7:40 am they
would be out of time. VC 2 at GMHA was expected to be reached at 7 am and
the cutoff was 9:30 am. The front runners were making VERY good time and
usually got there at the open time or soon after. The volunteers working the
gates had to be there half an hour before and we stayed until the last horse
checked out...but then there was usually time to bugger off and check out
another part of the race before you had to work again.

The procedure for the VC was also a bit different from what we'd
experienced. Volunteers with walkie talkies were usually stationed about 250
meters down the trail from the in-timers and they would call horse/rider
numbers ahead so that the in-timers were prepared. There were always more
than one in-timer, I'd say at least two with the ubiquitous Radio Shack
clocks. The in-timers recorded the time at which the horse passed the in
gate and wrote this down on a small (3X5?) card. Crew members could not
touch the horse until it passed the in gate. From the time that was recorded
as the in-time, the horse had 30 minutes to pulse down to 60. Each vet check
had a bunch of squarish areas marked off with plastic surveyors ribbon and
fiberglass poles, one for each team. A couple of the "teams" with only one
rider shared crewing room. As a horse came in through the in gate, the crew
immediately started pulling off tack and sponging as they walked to the
crewing area.

Once crew and rider determined that the horse had pulsed down, the horse and
EITHER, but not both, the rider or the groom would enter a 10 meter long
area called the transition area. They could not stop moving forward in this
space and had to proceed immediately to a pulsing lane. These were usually
about 6 or 8, sometimes less, lanes marked out by 2 meter 4X4's (ie, jumps)
or other long poles. Here the pulse volunteer would take the horse's pulse
with a heartcheck and wrist monitor. The pulser would wait until the pulse
registered and then wait for 15 seconds. If the pulse was under 60, the
pulser would call out "Time horse X" and be given a time, which would then
be recorded on the small card along with the time. If the pulse was over 60,
the pulser would wait another 15 seconds, then a third and a fourth if
necessary. To be honest, I don't know the procedure if the horse hadn't
pulsed down after a minute because when I was doing pulse at the last check,
it didn't happen. The pulse timers and everyone else had big digital clocks
that had been bought at Radio Shack and synchronised. There were usually two
pulse timers at a VC and as many as 6 or so pulsers. The mandatory hold time
began from the pulse time, and the horse proceeded to the vets for its check
and trot out. After the check, the small card and the rider card were taken
to the out-timers who wrote what time the  horse could leave the VC on both
cards. By VC 4, we'd figured out (the royal we, since it sure wasn't me)
that it made life easier if the small card were left with the out-timers who
would then record data onto sheets and arrange the cards in order of time.
This made life much easier for the guy standing by yet another Radio Shack
clock to release the riders on time. A few times horses were asked to
recheck before leaving and this meant that the small card didn't go to the
out timer right away.

Procedures at each check were pretty uniform and everything went much more
smoothly than I expected, given that this was a very important race....and
I'd seen some pretty chaotic scenes at our little backyard 100 km hooplas.

All this detail may seem somewhat unnecessary to you Ridecampers with a
gazillion miles under your belts, but we've had only one real season and are
still trying to figure out how to run good rides without going berserk.
Egypt is a long way from most rides so this was a golden opportunity to
learn everything that I possibly could. I must say that I had some terrific
teachers too. Nancy Wombacher and Rebecca Wachtel took me under their wings
right off and were really patient with all my dumb questions.

Oh no! There's more!

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


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