When is enough enough?

[Marinera@aol.com]

I think Ti, Sarah, Debi and anyone who has been connected with this sport 
very long knows that experience is the best teacher.  A rough guess is that I 
have ridden probably 60 to 70 One Hundred Mile One Day Rides, using many 
different horses. My conclusions based on my own personal experiences only 
are:

1. Luck.  You luck into a natural athlete with the proper attitude.  

2. Homework.  Be religious about it.  But know when too much is too much. The 
horse's mental state is very    important.  You must keep him fresh. Some 
riders have a natural instinct for this.  

3. Once a horse is in good endurance condition, it takes very little to keep 
him there, and he can come back from    an extended layoff very quickly. 

4. All the training in the world cannot make a winner out of horse who does 
not have natural talent.  All the   training in the world can ruin a horse 
who does have natural talent. 

5. Low completion rates on well known 100 mile rides are due to too many 
tired horses being asked to make    supreme efforts.  

My greatest learning experience came in 1986.  The Tevis Cup Ride was 5 weeks 
away.  I was out of town  for 3 1/2 weeks. Gazal  stood in a 1/3 acre paddock 
the entire time. I came home with 10 days to Tevis. I rode him twice in the 
next 10 days for a total of 5 hours.  At Tevis Gazal had the lead leaving the 
last vet stop at 94 miles by about two minutes.  I, not my horse, was simply 
unable to keep up the pace and we were passed by two riders. . But Gazal 
received the BC Haggin Cup.   The reasons: he was a gifted athlete: he was a 
well conditioned horse prior to his weeks of idleness:  he was fresh 
mentally.    In that particular ride, he also had a 2nd and BC, a 6th and BC 
and a 4th.  After my 2nd place finish to Boyd Zontelli, Courtney Hart  said 
to me at the finish line, "If Becky had been riding that horse, he would have 
won."  With apologies to my friend Boyd and his great horse, Hans,  I think 
Courtney was right.    

There are stars who shoot across our endurance sky with brilliance for a 
couple of years and then they flicker out.  True endurance has its finest 
hour in our sport with the horse that excels year after year.  A great part 
of it is just the luck of the draw.   You can increase your odds by informed 
decisions, but you can't control them all. One of the first things  I learned 
as a mother was that you cannot take your newborn baby and mold him like a pie
ce of clay into what you think he should be. He is still his own person.  It 
doesn't work with horses either.  They are still flesh and blood with minds 
of their own. 

Julie Suhr