Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Tammy Robinson said:

>You know, this is based on a ture story...it is a movie, and it is Hollywood...

 

Sorry, Tammy, but I don't think you've been following the

posts on this topic.  If you had, you would know that--

once Disney announced that it was making this movie,--

a number of historians began to search for more information

about Frank Hopkins.

 

What they discovered is that Frank Hopkins was a complete

and total *fraud*.  It isn't that Hopkins was an old west

rider who won--or even just rode--in some long distance races

in the 1880's and then fabricated a story about going to

Arabia and winning a race there.  It is that the races

that Frank Hopkins claimed to have participated in, even

the races in the US like the Galveston to Rutland, Vermont

race that he claimed to have won never even happened.

They are still even trying to figure out who Frank Hopkins

really was (ChuChullaine O'Reilly told me that he thought

he might have been a circus performer--a carny.)

 

Now, if what you mean is "there used to be distance races

in the old west," I'm not so sure that even that is actually

true.

 

O'Reilly has documented one long distance race that is

like what we would consider to be a multi-day endurance

race.  Unfortunately, he did not footnote his story, which

means I can't check it--amateur historians just don't

understand the critical role footnotes (aka "documenting

one's sources") plays in real historical research.

 

But that's the only one that any one has ever presented

to me.  Were there others?  You say "Yes?"  How do you

know.

 

The US Army used to hold long distance trials in the

19teens and 20's.  However, they were not races.  They

were run like a CTR.  The winner was a combination of

time and best condition. The Green Mountain Horseman's

Association 100 miles in 3-days ride (now an ECTRA CTR)

that has been running almost continuously since 1936 was

an effort by the (mostly Morgan) people of New England

to re-create the cavalry's distance trials.  But no race.

 

Such 19th century endurance races as I have seen first-hand

accounts of were a kind of one-man, multi-horse relay race

around a race track.  There'd be two riders.  Each rider

would have, say, 15 horses.  Each rider would jump on one

of his horses and race around a race track for two or three

miles.  Then, he'd jump off that horse and grab another horse,

and repeat the circuit.  The horses would have to be used

more than once, so a man couldn't just run all his mounts into

the ground.  The first man to finish 50 or 75 miles won.

 

The "race" that the Tevis Cup is named after commemorates

one of these relay-cum-pony-express-type endurance races,

evidently held or sponsored by the 19th century California

robber baron, Wells Fargo entrepreneur Lloyd Tevis.

 

Now, people seem to have kept pretty close track of

distance/time records in the 19th century, but these don't

seem to have been held as races among horses, but as

time-trials.

 

If anybody has any primary or contemporary source documentation

of early endurance races that are like what we think of as an

endurance race, I'd like to hear about it.  I don't claim

to have researched this topic:  I'm only saying that

Hopkins has taught us the importance of going back to

verify our assumptions against the primary record.

 

>The movie is going to be great, so enjoy it for what

>it is...a Hollywood Movie.  Any horse movies is good

>for our horses.  After 100 years, humans have forgotten

>what a big role the horse had in our history. 

 

Well, as somebody whose degree is in history and who

has done historical research, I'm more inclined to get

my back up about "true story" claims than many people.

So, that's kind of like telling me to "close your eyes,

lay back, and enjoy it."

 

But I agree whole-heartedly that people (and particularly

the eastern public land managers who grew up in suburbia

and whose experience of the outdoors is on day-hiking

field trips getting their "environmental science" degree)

have forgotten the many-thousand year relationship of

human and horse.

 

Linda B. Merims

lbm@xxxxxxxxx

Massachusetts, USA