Novice Ride Managers Beware

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>]

We are 6 days to race day and my main advice at this point is that anyone
who wants to start endurance racing not start with FEI rules right off
unless they have a functioning FEI local branch to help them. Our FEI is
totally show-jumping and unless a horse is over 16 hands, it's another kind
of animal, nor do they actually believe it humanly possible or recommended
that anyone sit on a horse longer than an hour. We got a long way to go
here!
The UAE FEI has actually been really helpful now that they are here,
although the local organisers are another story entirely and one that I am
seriously considering whether I even want to discuss publicly. I love Egypt
and the people here but these guys could give crooks a bad name. I'm now
working as a volunteer as I told the Jockey Club rep that he and I were
inhabiting different ethical universes and I couldn't work with him anymore.
Actually what I said was a whole lot more rude and abusive, but you get the
idea. My boys (a group of young men who have been working with me on the
organising of riders) cheered afterwards, but we've assigned one of them to
continue "helping" the JC guy just to keep an eye on him. Maybe the whole
story some other time.
We have about 50 local horses and about the same number from outside coming
in. I'll try to keep people updated. The venue is the Sakkara Country Club
again...tho' the JC wanted to have it in a much more inconvenient place.
Sometimes lots of money comes in handy because the FEI guy in charge is
Faisal Seddiq, Sheikh Maktoum's man, and he just waltzed in and said no to
the location that the JC had chosen and changed everything to the delight of
the riders. No problem on the trails, since we'd done them where we usually
ride. Some things will be easier...but if you think that the Forest Service
is fun, try a sheikh!!!! So far weather is good and we are hoping that we
don't get hit with a sandstorm as this is the season.
I heard from Tony Pavord that in Syria about 600 horses were presented for
the race of whom the local vets weeded out 300. The FEI got rid of another
70 or so and the foreign riders made up the rest. They had about 98 finish,
treated about 60 for lameness, and about 18 for metabolics, which Tony said
was better than they expected. The track was the usual graded flat course,
hence the blistering times.
Will try to update regularly if I'm still capable of intelligible language
at the end of the day.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg