Grueling 80-Mile Horse Race Demands More Than Speed
December 30, 2014 - In the world of endurance horse racing, rider and trainer Pedro Pablo Gomez knows his animals need more than speed to finish a race. He treats his horses like professional athletes, emphasizing “rest and repair.” Gomez lived for a decade in Jordan,where he learned to understand the famed Arabian horses.
Click here to read more about endurance horse racing in Chile.
Transcript
PEDRO PABLO GOMEZ, HORSE RIDER AND TRAINER:
Endurance for me, in its core, is to appreciate nature itself while riding a horse. Bedouins: my life took me to live with them for 10 years. I lived in Jordan and I learned how to live with horses.
Do you see the attitude of this horse? Scary? That is what we have to try to change in her.
What we’ll do this morning is a process that allows me to improve our man-horse relationship through a taming process
The Chile Cup was a race of 120 kilometers divided in 5 laps
Once you have the horse and you passed the vet-check, it’s all about attention you have to pay to it so that the horse can continue the race.
In 15 minutes one can tell if the horse ate or not, if it peed or not, if the urine is dark or clear, you can perceive a lot. So in that period of time is when you plan the next round, through observation. These are minutes of a lot of observation and caring.
Now that we have a horse with a new attitude, we can start to work with it.
The main rule in endurance is that the horse finishes the race, but to finish properly, it has to be ready to continue racing (again). A professional athlete has routine, a professional athlete has food, a professional athlete does exercise, and a professional athlete also rests. And that routine lets him mechanize, and that mechanization permits an increase in his performance. For us it’s a big prize as a stable, as a team, as a human group, winning Copa Chile and earning the ‘best condition’ horse award, which is the most valued award you can get as a horse trainer.
