Winning by a Heartbeat : Health of Horses Plays an Integral Role in Endurance-Riding Competition

During the recent 50-mile Pacific Coast Endurance Ride, a man with a stethoscope listened to a horse’s heartbeat, looked anxiously at the second hand on his watch and shouted, “Still at 68!” Hurriedly, two women sponged ice water on the animal for two or three minutes, until the man relaxed, lowered the stethoscope and sighed, “It’s 64 . . . he’s down.”

In endurance riding, horses are given emergency-room attention several times during a competition, but not because they have life-threatening problems. Checkups are scheduled every 10 or 15 miles to give horses a short breather and ensure that they are physically sound enough to continue. But checkups also play an important strategic role: The faster a horse’s heartbeat falls to 64 beats a minute, the sooner the rider is allowed to resume the ride. So it behooves horse owners to keep their 1,000-pound machines in good working order and not push them beyond their limits just to win a race.

“The controls make sure people don’t abuse their animals,” said Emmit Ross, a member of a pit crew.

Veterinarian checkpoints, called “P and R” (for pulse and respiration), provided the best viewing during the Pacific Coast ride. In the far reaches of the Santa Monica Mountains, somewhere in the chaparral, 50 riders were jockeying for position, but it was impossible to determine the leaders until they rode into a vet check. And sometimes, the first horse in wasn’t the first out.

“Races can be won or lost at the vet check,” said Karen Zontelli of Agoura, an organizer of the event.

The third of the four vet checks was held at Tapia Park, the junction of the figure-eight course. When Kim Fuess and her horse Farrah Gypzam came in, they were in second place, four minutes behind the leader, Sharon Latham of Camarillo, with 20 miles remaining. But after sipping strawberry nectar from a can, Fuess and her 11-year-old part-Arabian mare continued their journey into the Santa Monicas, four minutes in the lead.

Farrah Gypzam had recovered quickly during the vet check, but it had taken Latham’s Gray Goose a few extra minutes to reach 64. The 7-year-old pure Arabian, which had won the event two years ago with Latham’s sister aboard, was also favoring his left foreleg. He was examined by Hugh J. Hewitt, a Woodland Hills veterinarian. Hewitt looked for signs of exhaustion and dehydration: a limp tail, a loss of elasticity in the skin. Then he had Latham lead the horse in a slow trot, which revealed a slight irregularity in his gait. Hewitt made the call--pull the horse from the ride--and Latham agreed. “I’m disappointed,” she said, “but it’s not worth the risk of crippling him to win this.”

The Pacific Coast event, in its 15th year, is one of two endurance rides in the Santa Monica Mountains. Both are staged by Zontelli and Ingrid Shattuck of Thousand Oaks. They run a team of 20 volunteers who mark the course with ribbon and lime and keep track of the times during the hectic vet checks, which Zontelli compares to auto racing pit stops.

About half the competitors ride regularly in the Santa Monicas, so the trails were familiar to them. Fuess, 32, had even more of a home-field advantage: Her Calabasas home is in the middle of the mountains. “You can take it faster uphill if you know you have two miles downhill to recover,” said Fuess, who started riding only six years ago.

Like a lot of endurance riders, Fuess occasionally jumps off her horse and runs alongside or behind, holding the animal’s tail, a practice known as “tailing.” Although endurance rides are basically marathon races for horses, riders also have to be in top physical condition. The running factor is the reason most endurance riders shun the standard equestrian outfit--boots and jodhpurs--for tennis shoes and tights.

During the first 40 miles of the race, Fuess had an added edge: Her horse was motivated by the erroneous impression that it was going home. But Fuess could work that ruse only until she came to the fork in the trail that would have led back to her house, a quarter-mile away. It happened about five miles from the last vet check. Fuess had a big lead on Kim Bagby of Chatsworth until Farrah Gypzam got serious about returning to the barn.

“We had a big fight,” Fuess said. The result: They went in circles for about two minutes before Fuess coerced the horse back on course. By then, Bagby had caught her. They rode into the vet check about even. Farrah Gypzam, however, recovered faster than Mirrazh, a 9-year-old pure Arabian, and Fuess was able to leave three minutes ahead with only five miles to go.

After Bagby left the vet check, Hewitt observed that “the first horse (Farrah Gypzam) seemed so reluctant to go out, but the second horse (Mirrazh) left so willingly.” The smart money--had there been betting--would have been on Bagby, Hewitt said.

But Fuess was able to snap Farrah Gypzam out of her lethargy after about a mile. “She was moving,” Bagby said. “She knew we were coming.” Indeed, Fuess said she “didn’t want to look back. I knew she had a lot of horse left.”

Just before the finish line, Farrah Gypzam lost a shoe, but by then, it didn’t matter. Fuess finished 2 minutes 20 seconds ahead of Bagby, clocking 5 hours 22 minutes. “I had a good day,” said Fuess, tired, dusty and mud-splattered after winning her first endurance race. “If she had lost that shoe any other place but the finish, I’d have been out of luck.”

For her effort, Fuess won a director’s chair, although she probably didn’t feel like sitting down, and her horse also got a reward: This time, it really was going home.