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At the risk of being flamed--oh, heck, I KNOW I'll get flamed!--I think I'll 
speak out in favor of Suicide Races.

Or maybe I'm not so much in favor of Suicide Races as I am of dispassionate 
evaluation--something that seems to be tossed out the window here fairly 
often.


Please look at the inflammatory wording on the article quoted.

"The opening stretch  is 210 feet in length"   and once at the bottom   "The 
exhausted and terrified horses are then forced to swim or run"

The horses are exhausted after going only 210 feet?


"the course is a plunge down a 60-degree slope" ... Horses who survive the 
initial, vertical plunge"

Apparently, the writer isn't sure if it's 60-degree slope or a 90-degree 
vertical.

I've seen endurance riders forcing their sweating, heaving, straining mounts 
to trot up sandy sixty-degree vertical hills in the Eagle, Idaho foothills. 
(whoops, forgive the hyperbole, the article got to me there) Trotting down 
these slopes is only for the brave at heart, but I've seen endurance riders 
do it, and I've seen cowboys chase cows down a rocky(!) Owyee rangeland 
slope easily sixty to sixty-five-degrees.

Here's a couple slope pictures:
http://www.hikingintherockies.com/TM/IMG_0544.jpg
The caption to this one: "I took this shot to show the slope actually was 
40-degrees since most people over-estimate a slope angle."

I'd say the majority of Top Ten finishers have trotted or cantered a slope 
of 40-degrees with good footing.

Assuming the author didn't over-estimate or, heaven forbid, exaggerate, 
here's some examples of sixty-degree slopes:

http://humanities.cqu.edu.au/geography/GEOG11023/images/TiltStrataWMcDons2.jpg
Caption: "Here the strata are folded with about a 65 degree tilt to the 
south."

It's doable. Several Pacific Northwest endurance rides have hills this 
steep.

http://www.martinelliwinery.com/images/jackass_1_colorized.jpg
Here's a picture of a fella farming a sixty-degree slope--Jackass Hill is 
the steepest non-terraced hillside vineyard in Sonoma County.

If a tractor can handle the slope, a horse can, the only question then 
becomes how fast is practical or safe. At that point, it depends on the 
horse and the rider.


In the "unpredictable waters of the Okanogan ... horses are "forced to swim 
or run, depending on the depth of the river, a span of approximately 50 
yards"

That distance is "approximately" 50 yards less than the 100 yard dash I won 
in sixth grade, and approximately 14 feet shorter than the regulation 50 
meter Olympic pool.

My kids were allowed to take their horses out to creek where it was sandy 
for about a quarter mile and gallop them up and down the creek bed in the 
summer. The horses seemed to enjoy racing. If the kids had a parent along, 
they could go to the reservoir and swim the horses for the afternoon. Some 
horses swam naturally, some learned, some were awkward, and some swam better 
than others. I guess you could call it "forcing a horse to swim" when the 12 
year-old riding bareback is kicking for all he's worth to get his pony in 
the water fast enough to catch his sister so he can knock her off her horse.

"As the animals struggle out of the river, riders whip and kick the horses 
into a gallop up a steep grade to the finish line."

Whoops, the writer forgot to mention spurs.

Why didn't the writer just come out and say "the riders beat their horses 
into a gallop"? That's what's being insinuated.

Kentucky Derby jockeys carry whips and kick their horses. Barrel racers spur 
their horses--some carry bats. Even dressage riders are known to carry whips 
and wear spurs. Cowboys over-and-under a horse jumping after a cow. I've 
seen endurance riders race to the finish kicking every stride. Most don't 
carry whips, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen them used to get a cranky 
horse out of camp on occasion.

"Not as easy to see is the mental stress the race has on the horses?by 
nature high-strung, sensitive animals."

That sentence could easily be written by someone from PETA discussing 
endurance. Their next sentence might conceivably point to ulcers in 
endurance horses as 'proof' of their mental stress. Food for thought there.

"The horses and riders who successfully complete the first race will go on 
to race again..."

The horses run successive heats over DAYS, unlike Standardbred racing.

Depending on your agenda, it would be easy to write an article on how 
endurance riders "force" their horses to trot or run while covering long 
distances of 5 to 10 miles "without water."  Meanwhile the horses are 
"pouring sweat" and at the finish are "exhausted" and will stand next to the 
trailers with their "head hanging."  (post-ride horse nap)

Despite all our best efforts, horses do get hurt and even die at endurance 
rides from metabolic issues, breaking a leg and having to be destroyed, or 
in hideous and unforeseen accidents. Sport entails effort and risk.



30+ years ago there was a Suicide Race near the Idaho-Oregon border 
consisting of similar terrain--down a steep embankment, across a river, and 
approximately a 1/4 mile run up the bank and across the flat. It was run as 
a one shot deal, not in heats. $300 prize money. For some  reason, I thought 
my mustang mare could do this course, not to win of course, but it sounded 
like great fun to run down the hill, swim the river, and race to the finish. 
That year, not really knowing just what it entailed, rather than haul the 
horse over, I decided to go watch instead. It was an amazing lesson.

I learned that there are two types of riders that enter these races. The 
first are amazingly tough and capable riders--mostly cowboys--who have 
well-conditioned working horses that are experienced in handling rough 
terrain, bred, born, and raised in this country, and together, rider and 
horse are a professional team. These horses will do anything for their 
riders, and these riders have an immense respect for their horses and know 
what they're capable of. Watching a skilled team like this compete will take 
your breath away. They're not racing for some prize money, although it's 
always a bonus, they're racing to challenge themselves and prove the caliber 
of their mount.

The other kind of rider? They're just idiots. Haven't got a clue. Drugstore 
cowboys, big egos, money grubbers and wannabes. This yours-truly wannabe 
watched and applauded and booed and cheered and went home convinced that, as 
a race, this was waaaay out of MY league. Two years later, I did enter my 
horse, and it was great fun to *trot* down the hill, swim the river, and 
race to the finish--tied for dead last. I remember at least two horses fell, 
one man getting bucked off, one woman breaking her arm, but fortunately no 
equine or human killed. I also remember one year in the seventies at 
Prineville endurance ride, the attrition rate was about the same at the 
shotgun start.

Suicide races and rodeo are two uniquely Western sports that arose out of 
the daily work that was done by cowboys. Men would pit their skills against 
the animals, the land, and each other, and because their work was rough and 
dangerous, their idea of fun was tough, and their competition was rough, and 
often dangerous. Both sets of participants were at risk--animals and men. 
It's entirely understandable that both sports would be under fire today.

But enough of the romanticism.

I remember gritting my teeth and hearing from the 'old-timers' about how 
endurance rides killed horses. Heidi is spot-on, much of the bad rap 
endurance had was a hang-over from the Suicide Races and the Pony-Express 
races that went from being local good-natured competition between a few 
cowboys on the 4th of July, to being cut-throat 'big money' races that it 
was worth the risk of killing a horse to win. It's taken a long time for 
endurance to become "respectable."

Just like rodeo has had a bad reputation, endurance has had a bad rep. What 
makes these sports possible today is oversight, clear and stringent rules 
that protect the animals, and internal as well as external monitoring. Even 
though horses can die in endurance, we as horsemen and sportsmen have 
declared an acceptable level of effort and risk in our sport. Perhaps 
instead of a knee-jerk reaction and a call for the end of Suicide Races, we 
should be clamoring for regulations, oversight, and an allowance of an 
acceptable level of risk.

Steeple chasing, endurance riding, bronc riding, puissance jumping, bushkazi 
and yes, suicide rides, are all dangerous sports that have evolved out of 
our past equestrian alliance as supreme tests of man and horse. As endurance 
riders, we hark back to the ideals of the US Cavalry, the Cadre Noir, the 
Mongolian Horde, the cowboy, the gaucho, the Cossack. Our ultimate 
sophisticated ballet with horses, the airs above the ground, evolved from 
methods of warfare. The sentimentalist in me doesn't want to see horses, or 
people, hurt; the romantic in me doesn't want to entirely let go of our 
glorious and dangerous past.

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