1 Masters Games 2004 – Let’s Try Endurance

by Jenny · Published January 23, 2019 · Updated February 11, 2019

In 2004 I had two horses – my “proper” horse, Supes, around 16-1hh chestnut thoroughbred. Lovely to ride, he especially enjoyed cantering… that’s what a racehorse does best right? He didn’t pull and would nearly canter on the spot rather than trot. He took to jumping, really enjoying that too, his lovely canter making him awesome across country. And my other horse, George.

George is a Standardbred that I got by accident, he was leased from the local knacker (pet food buyer) by work to take part in a research project. One of the academics had had ponies as a kid and decided that we couldn’t send him back, so staff and students all clubbed together and bought George, I had horses already, and was in charge of the horses we happened to have at work at the time, so I got to take him home once he’d also taken part in a second research project. I was going to teach him to ride and sell him, this was in July 2000, he was only 3 years old. So when you hear about animals in research think of George and remember he owes his life to animal experiments. Our experiments were all behavioural so there was not any unpleasantness involved for George or any of the animals.

So in 2004 I still had George – don’t ask, I’m not quite sure how that happened! That February the Masters Games was in Hamilton just 30 minutes away. There was a Games programme at work, I was taking Supes in the two day event and the hunter trials. A friend asked what I was going to take George in, the games day? Hell no, he’s way too clumsy… so we settled on both going in the 20km Endurance race. There was Competitive Trail Ride too, but we totally didn’t understand what that was about, a race we understood. There was a 40km endurance event as well… no way, that’s too far!

So I started training George for endurance. I quickly discovered that riding I really enjoyed – hooning down the roadside grass verges – had suddenly become reclassified, instead of a slightly evil escape from real riding (schooling) it was now called training and was a legitimate, even required activity!

Another friend enquired about the vet check requirement at endurance rides, what was my plan there? Again I had absolutely no idea what was involved, so my plan was to ride the race and then hope he passed. Not a terribly good strategy, I suppose I should have Googled it, then I might have known what was involved. But I didn’t think of that, and in my defence we weren’t so heavily into Googling everything back then…

I did have a ride plan though. George and I had built up our training to 13km. I had discovered he was good for a solid 20-30 minutes trotting, so my race-day plan was to trot 20 minutes and walk 5. In reality the course was not flat, so this translated into trotting on the flat bits and walking up the hills… it turns out George is not good at hills… Thus I accidently stumbled onto an Endurance basic rule, have a plan and ride your own ride.

George and I ended up making a break on our friend coming down the final hill and we won a Gold Medal! The dreaded vet check turned out to be a non-event. Actually as it was not an official endurance ride – it couldn’t be as we were novices and got prizes – the vet check was just some ride officials with heart rate monitors and a trot up. George’s heart rate came down quickly and was around 57, my strapping helper/official then asked if I wanted to take that heart rate, “But we have plenty of time, it could be lower”, “Doesn’t matter” was the reply. Well that didn’t make any sense, but a final trot up and we were the winners .