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Day 1
Images by
Brigette Huard
Day 1
Images by
Brigette Huard

Official Event Site

Official Event Documents
Lists of Starters

Maps

Boucle Nord 31km
Boucle Sud 21km
Boucle Sud 31km
Boucle Nord 21km


www.ceer-fc.com


A.C.E.L








The 90km

Talk about the Uzes Young Horse Finals and you're talking about a logisitical nightmare. But apparently only for the ride photographers, not the organisers who seemed to run the whole shooting match like proverbial clockwork.

With over 167 starters (some of the entrants had failed the initial vetting last night) and because of the indecently fast speeds last year, the powers-that-be (the SHF) decided on a staggered start which spread over 75 minutes with approximately 10 horses leaving every five minutes.

Easy enough if the numbers had been concurrant but the batch of ten were drawn like a bingo card with one horse from each decade (or two) in each pack. So the first group to leave - at 7.00 - were numbers 5, 16, 31, 45, 60 etc. and the next might have been 4, 22, 38, 56 etc. So - really really not an easy race to judge who was in the lead but this was exactly what the SHF had in mind when they decided to have an alternative to a mass start.

At the briefing the cavaliers (riders) had been told that a speed of 16.6kph would be considered ample for a six year old attempting 90kilometres for the first time and, when the horses came into the first vet gate having tackled the 31k loop north of the historic town of Uzes, this probably worked out as the average speed, but only because half the riders were faster than that and the other half slower! Ranging from just below 18 to just above 10kph!

Fortified by coffee and a forty minute hold, the second loop - also 31k but dropping south - used to be regarded as the tough one. But in 2006 the SHF, who are always eager to listen to constructive criticism did an amazing thing - they crushed 20kilometres of stones and laid sand on top so that it then rolled like a red dream through the vineyards and olive groves.

The vetting at the end of the second loop should have been a stastical nightmare. It was the 'represent' vetgate so each horse had to be seen twice?. There were also nearly 200 horses queuing to be vetted for tomorrows 60k competition for the 5 yr olds?.but amazingly it ran like a well oiled vetting machine!

Although the riders had initially left in batches of ten by the third loop few, if any, groups had stayed in their original order and a rider came past the sweating photographers (it was over 30 degrees centigrade) at the rate of about two a minute. So, what to do? If one stayed on course to shoot each rider then (apart from missing the wonderful lunch laid on) there's no chance to catch the first horses being vetted. (If you need to know what choice your correspondent chose he can assure you that he was very well fed).

It was an amazing result. Last year there were only three horses who gained the coveted Elite' and this year 15 were victorious. Another 30 gained 'Excellent'. Altogether 91 horses passed the 90k ride whilst 76 were either eliminated or abandoned.

Basil de Mulo