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Back in the Saddle with a New Heart: Jessica’s ACM Story
SADS.org - Full Story
By Jessica V. and the SADS Foundation
Published December 2, 2025
Jessica swings into the saddle and heads out with her daughter for a 50-mile endurance horseback ride. From the outside, it might look like any other long-distance ride – but Jessica is doing it with a new heart after surviving cardiac arrest and years of misdiagnoses.
“Something’s wrong with my heart”
Jessica’s earliest memories of her heart go back to childhood. At nine years old, lying in bed at night, she could hear and feel her heart “skipping beats” in her ear. Her mom, an ER nurse, took her to the doctor. They did tests and told her family she had premature ventricular contractions (or PVCs) – extra beats that were brushed off as a “normal abnormality.”
“I’ll never forget that phrasing – what the heck is a normal abnormality?” says Jessica.
Assured by her doctor that everything was fine, Jessica became a track star, played soccer and tennis, earned her black belt, and competed in Taekwondo tournaments. In her teens and early adulthood, she started fainting. Once, she passed out while teaching a kickboxing class. As she went into college, she had episodes of tunnel vision and blacking out. Eventually she was told she was having panic attacks.
“For years I was told it was panic attacks. Deep down I knew something was really wrong with my heart.”
She accepted the diagnosis and kept going – even as her symptoms continued, and started to get worse.
After college, Jessica worked at a law firm in California. Her symptoms were getting harder to ignore. She was blacking out at her desk. She felt constantly exhausted, sometimes even nodding off in the car on the way home from work. Then one day, she simply couldn’t wake up fully. She dragged herself to the ER with a friend, complaining of chest pain, shortness of breath, and a racing heart.
She sat in the ER for about an hour and a half before anyone ran an EKG.
“When they finally did, everything changed,” she says. The ER staff realized she was in ventricular tachycardia (V-tach) – an extremely dangerous, fast heartbeat – with lots of PVCs and ectopy (extra or skipped heartbeats that disrupt the normal rhythm). Suddenly, the doctors were panicking...
Read more here:
https://sads.org/blog-cat/back-in-the-saddle-with-a-new-heart-jessicas-acm-story/
James (Jim) Bryant Passes Away
Castanet.net
James (Jim) Bryant, aged 83 of Kelowna BC, passed away November 15th after a lengthy illness. Jim graduated from Washington State University in 1964, served two years in the US Army, and moved to BC in 1970 and started a equine practice in Maple Ridge. In 1992 he moved to Kelowna and joined a mixed practice as a equine veterinarian.
Jim became interested in endurance riding as a veterinarian in the early 1980s. Over the years, he attended rides as a vet in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California, and eventually into Europe and the United Arab Emirates. In 1998 he travelled to Abu Dhabi for a year to assist the organizing committee in planning and hosting the first World Endurance Championship.
In 1999 he was offered a position in the Abu Dhabi Equestrian Federation. After three years he relocated to Dubai, and became veterinarian to the Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed’s stable of Arabian endurance horses. Jim travelled to several countries in search of the top horses for the Sheikh’s stables.
He retired and returned back home to Kelowna in 2015, filling in on occasion for Alex Wales in Lake Country. Jim is survived by his wife of 51 years Sandy, sons Jim and Richard, stepsons Colin and Michael, seven grandchildren, six great grandchildren and his brother Rusty Bryant. A celebration of Jims life will be announced at a later date.
Avery Translates Global Lessons to the Podium
FEI.org - Full Article
06 November 2025
Stacey Stearns
Sometimes success begins by turning a different corner. For young American Endurance talent Avery Betz-Conway, that turn came two years ago in a qualifying ride, when a fellow rider fell. While others kept going, she stopped to check that both horse and rider were all right. The decision cost her time that day, but it would ultimately open a door that led all the way to the Pan American podium in Campinas (BRA).
“We stayed in touch while qualifying for the World Championships,” the 19-year-old said. “This year, his family leased a horse to me for the Pan Ams. If I hadn’t stopped to check on him during that ride, I would never have been able to compete at the Pan American Games.”
That spirit of comradeship paid off spectacularly in July, when Avery won an Individual bronze medal on Zendaya Rach at the FEI Endurance Pan American Championship for Young Riders & Juniors 2025 – the first medal for USA Endurance in more than a decade...
Read more here:
https://www.fei.org/stories/sport/endurance/avery-betz-conway-usa-pan-am-bronze
Endurance Future Part Two
WeAreOnTheLoose.com - Full Article
by Jamethiel Morse
November 1 2025
Part One, Endurance: Where are the ribbons? is here.
Life got a bit lifey and delayed the second installment of musing about the future of the sport of endurance. We left off talking about the culture of endurance, and it affects the growth (or decline) of the sport. One of the thornier issues I didn’t touch on is the heated debate over what constitutes “real endurance”. There’s a camp of folks that firmly believes that calling anything under a 50 mile ride endurance is doing a disservice to the true ethos of the sport. Some say only 100 mile rides are true endurance, and anything less is “just” training towards that ultimate goal.
This debate comes up like clockwork, to the detriment of our sport I think. Folks should be welcome to share the trails and this horsemanship journey called endurance with us, no matter if their goal is to rack up 100 milers or if completing one LD takes all their effort and time. Crunching current numbers shows that most folks (especially those that “pay a ride managers bills”) are actually “Limited Distance Riders”, between 25 and 35 miles. I myself view 50s as a comfortable middle: I get more bang for my buck than an LD, both in terms of time on the trail and a challenge completed, but I don’t have to stay awake and functional for a full 24 hours to complete 100 miles. Honestly, I also don’t have to push my mare and myself hard enough during training to be 100 miler fit and ready. The leap from comfortably turtling 50s, as my mare and I do, to completing a 100 miler is just as exponential as getting her to the starting line of our first LD was...
Read the rest here:
https://weareontheloose.com/2025/11/01/endurance-future-part-two/