The trail was realy sandy and rather heavy. Temperatures were low, about
4-8 degrees Celsius and it was foggy all day.
I started Bechir in the 31 Miles a few minutes after the pack to be able to
ride my own ride. Unfortunately a few miles down the trail a marking had
disappeared and we ran into the whole gang again. We got back onto the
trail and I let the whole pack take off again. Bechir was annoyed as he is
very competitive.
7 Miles down the trail he suddenly stepped into a rabbit hole which wasn't
visible as it might have been just below the surface. Beng! We tumbled
over. My first concern was whether the horse was OK. He seemed to be fine.
I was afraid he overstretched a tendon or something, but he walked and
trotted out just right.
Then I noticed that my arm was bleeding like hell. He probably hit my arm
with a hoofnail (that's the way it looked, a piece of flesh had disappeared
and a vein had been hit). I pressed the wound with a finger and started
walking to a camping place nearby.
A helpfull man helped me washing out the wound. We put a plaster on and
wrapped a bandage around the arm the stop the bleeding.
It hurted, but I wanted to continue. I thanked him for his help, examined
the horse again, got on Bechir's back, felt his gaites were OK and decided
to continue towards the P/R check and have him examined there by the vet.
Everything was OK. We continued. The arm was still bleeding and hurting,
but I wanted to go on.
Vetgate: everything fine. Took a little longer break (20 minutes hold time,
took 30 minutes). Wrapped icepacks around Bechir's legs.
2nd part went excellent. Jumpy Bechir was after the accident realy carefull
with me (he WAS behaving as we tumbled over; it certainly wasn't his
fold!).
We had a nice ride. Perfect final inspection (44/10), no lameness. Out of
15 competitors we ended up 10th position. (3 took the wrong route and made
a short cut, 2 horses were lame). Riding time not very spectacular: 254
minutes (including the additional vetinspection, extra hold time and the
accident). Best time was just over 3 hours.
In total about 120 horses competed in this first ride of season - about 10
% of 15.5 Miles riders were eliminated for veterinairy reasons. A lot of
which were first time riders and were not familiar with what their horses
were and weren't able to do. Much of them had too high rates.
Desiree Hanen - The Netherlands
(Still ... it takes Love over Gold & to finish is to win!)