Who says endurance isn't a spectator sport? This is how you get the
spectators involved in all the action. See all by following the horses the
entire 160 KM inside a Landrover. Window seats cost extra.
Tom Ivers once wrote about this experience when he was over there.
Cell phones, radios, and some central command post kind of thing similar to
NASCAR where they radio in all the instructions, which horse and
rider to follow, which one to go back to, all very chaotic. And the
speeds, over 50 MPH in the desert, with the driver paying no attention to the
hills, small as they may be, that you literally flew over at those
speeds. AIRBORNE! I don't think Tom ever went back out there in
a vehicle again after his first experience.
Each Sheik has many horses in the ride and the folks inside these
vehicles take care of more than just one horse during the course of
the day. All instructions to the rider are radioed in, by the Head guy
himself sometimes, which the guy in the truck yells out, literally, to the rider
during the race. I think the main command is, "Ride FASTER!"
Yea, it's a bit different over there. Instead of the phrase "trot
out" they should say "truckout."
I woke up this AM and of course had to see what
was going on with the President's Cup...The real time web cast popped up..and
on my computer it is just this little bitsy screen about the size of a playing
card...and I could make out vast numbers of objects in a big pack moving
along in this big cloud of dust ..thought at first they were horses all
bunched up together..which seemed pretty amazing considering it was towards
the end of the race..I put on my glasses and was astounded to find that all
the objects except for one little gray speck amongst them, were vehicles!!!
and when they showed closed ups of the horse and rider..most of the time what
you saw were trucks and landrovers more trucks and landrovers with people
hanging out the window and crammed into the beds of pickups. You have to see
it to get the full effect of the NUMBERS of vehicles Literally..just with this
one horse..there must be 15 vehicles or more!!!!!!!!!! The helicopter
shots were the funniest....especially on my tiny screen...All I could make out
were a huge number of vehicles racing around in the desert. Now I'm
sure there must have been some coverage of the vet checks etc that I
missed...but if, in fact, what I saw is a representation of the majority of
the coverage of the President's Cup...so far it belongs on the comedy
channel!
