Ridecamp: [RC] Masters? Race

Well, they held a race today at the Giza Pyramids. The newspaper
sponsoring it (under HEAVY support from a certain segment of the
competitors) described the course as being 130 km from the Pyramids at
Giza to the Pyramids at Dahshur via the Japanese Hill and back. That
interested me rather a lot because I've been riding for the last two
days in the area of the Japanese Hill (a landmark that my friend Babsi
and I are particularly proud of because we named it...really!) and I had
seen ABSOLUTELY NO signs of an impending international sporting
event...like, maybe flags for the trail or people checking out the trail
or something. So around 11:30 some of us went out in a 4x4 to see what
was going on. We found absolutely nothing, nada, no one.

We called a few friends who we were pretty sure would be somewhere in
the vicinity of the festivities for one reason or another. We hadn't
gone because each of us had something important happening at our barns
that morning, and none of the riders from any of the studs and boarding
stables in our neighbourhood were participating. Quite reliable sources
described the so-called "Masters" race as being the usual kind of fiasco
that we have all grown to know and hate.

Yesterday, a local trainer said that the ride organisers were paying
grooms from the pyramids hack stables LE 150 to show up at the ride.
This being almost a month's pay, it would be an attractive offer.
Another individual who lives in the area of the hack stables said that
the riders had been promised LE 1000 to ride in the race, but this was
promised two years ago and no one got a penny....so who's going to
believe them this time? Well, somehow someone did because the starting
lineup was described as being in the area of 150 riders, of whom more
than half of the locals were pulled after the first loop. Naturally, one
of the Maktoums won...big surprise.

Tomorrow and the next day will give us a better idea of the body count
since many of the problems won't show up for a day or so (like
laminitis) and I'll check on how things went. Some people figure that
anyone who would take LE 1000 to ride a horse to death deserves to get
stiffed, as they undoubtedly will, but at the same time we are talking
about people supporting families for whom this is at least 4 months
salary. I find the offering of such incentives far more insulting and
criminal than the taking of them by poor people. 

At the press conference to announce this grand event last week, there
was no representative of the national federation present. This event, it
is presumed based on the no-show, has nothing to do with the FEI. The
relationship of the Masters of Endurance series to the FEI is a bit
shady actually, since the series is being run by a corporate office from
Paris that is connected with the currently ex-main man of the Emirates
federation. But that same individual is on the FEI endurance committee.
Go figure.

The dust will settle over the next couple of days and things will be
clearer, although probably too late for some poor horses. Personally, I
find it excrutiatingly offensive that people can just come here, use
people who really can't pass up a chance to make money for their
families, trash the area of the race (empty water bottles and elecrolyte
syringes all over the desert), and what for? So that the purchaser can
be proclaimed the King of Endurance? Give me a break. One rationale
wafting through the breeze for paying riders to come is that they are
being re-imbursed for the expenses of training the horses. Are riders
re-imbursed anywhere else? And were all these horses in training? And
for how long? Most of the finishers of the middle distance race last
year were too badly injured to participate in the final race in the
spring, so we don't exactly have many seasoned horses here. Once things
become more clear I'll post again.

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


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