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[RC] [RC] 2007 National Championship - Dream Weaver

Hi Steph: My thoughts on doing a multiday or pioneer national championship is that it should be 5 days. Simply because it would be inappropriate to call the winner of a 3 day ride a national multiday or pioneer champion when there are horses and riders completing 5 day rides, and often doing many of them throughout the ride season. That's the whole point of the Pioneer Award, or the Gold Medal XP award -- to truly endure, and to separate those who are better at managing their horses for truly long distances. Doing well in one ride is great and a draw for a lot of riders, but there are also a lot of riders who look at more long term goals like a successful ride season put together with many successful rides. There IS a difference in being able to do 3 days on a horse versus 5. There are lots of riders who simply cannot get a horse (or themselves) thru all 5 days, but 3 is no problem. To make it more interesting you could only give completions to those that pass the final completion check at the end of the 5th day (like they do in Australia). Wouldn't that slow things down and get people really paying attention to how they manage their horses!! Though you wouldn't get very many entries! ;-)

I think that if you are going to travel a long way that the more days of riding you can get in the more cost effective it is. Riders want to ride, and if you are going to attract multiday riders then 5 days is better than 3. I would go to Idaho for 3 if the dates were right but I won't hardly go 8 hours to ride only one day. It's just too time consuming and expensive. The cost of fuel is greater than the entry fee for a 5 day ride, for most of the riders.

By the way -- there are three Gold Medal XP Horses this year. They completed all of the XP rides, which include: 3 days at Cuyama, 3 days at Mt. Carmel, 5 days at Forst Schellbourne, 5 days at Bryce Canyon and 5 days at Grand Canyon. A total of 1060 miles and 21 days. These are some outstanding horses, ridden by outstanding riders. They are: Karen Fredrickson on Murphy, Stephanie Palmer DuRoss on Hadji Halef Omar and Les Carr on Tulip. Tulip by the way is about to break the record for the highest mileage horse in the sport ever. He looks great and we should all be so lucky to have a horse like that, or like any of these three. Congratulations to them all for a successful ride season!

Karen

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