Re: [RC] Decline of entries in 100 milers - Heidi Smith
>I tried a few 100 mile rides when I was in the peak of my
endurance riding days and it seemed that after about 80 miles the fun started to
decline.
I'm with Angie--there is a real "high" about riding in the
dark that you just can't get on a 50. I've been absolutely beat at 80
miles, and think I can't get on, but then the stars (and sometimes the moon)
come out, and you get into that private little "zone" in the dark that just
contains you and your horse, and you feel like you could just go on and on and
on.
>It also seemed that the slower, steady horses were better
over all at the 100 mile rides and that you tended to see different breeds
successfully completing in the longer races. The fast 50's were almost always
won by an Arab, but they weren't always the ones successfully completing
the longer distance. That was true of my two endurance horses. My Appy mare way
outdid my Arab for mileage, but my Arab was much better than her for
speed.
I dunno. I see an awful lot of horses of different
breeds completing 50's as well, and some that do pretty well. OTOH, I
just finished up a bunch of stats on pedigrees on Tevis winners, and for
openers, out of 50 Tevis wins (48 rides, 2 ties), only 2 were by horses that
were not either Arabs or Arab crosses. (And those were back in 1959
and 1960.) 32 of those wins were by registered purebreds. (BTW,
if anyone wants to see the pedigree stats, let me
know.)
