Tevis Forum 2022

TEVIS FORUM 2022 - 7 www.teviscup.org (continued on page 65) Ozark Kaolena SWA, or Lena, as she is affectionately known, was essentially bought off a picture. She so perfectly epitomized the ideal endurance horse “frame” in my mind’s eye that I put a deposit down on her before I even saw her in the flesh. Of course, she also came with glowing recommenda- tions and comments from her race trainers about her willing temperament, her toughness, and most importantly, her no nonsense attitude to never missing a meal. Lena in the flesh lived up to every compliment about her and we liked Lena so much, in the months following, I arranged to buy her half-sister for my daughter, Reyna, as soon as the mare was done racing. As the cliché goes, the rest is history. I have more miles on Lena (over 2100 now), with many more BCs wins (including the National Championship 100 mile BC in 2019), and top tens, than I have on any other horse I have ridden in 20 years. Lena is a once in a lifetime horse, a true treasure, and I treat her as such. She is red headed, she is sensitive, and she does have “opinions,” but we have a partnership built on mutual respect. Lena as a horse, has a better spirit than a lot of humans – she is genuine, authentic, raw, and you know exactly what she is feeling and thinking, yet all of it is tempered with an innate politeness, and an innate willingness to get along and please. For people who train horses and/or consider themselves horsemen, they will understand when I say, this mare is full of so much “try” and “want to,” she has enough for 20 horses. Lena finished her first Tevis, her first ever 100miler, in 2019 with a 17 th place finish. It was crazy that a 17th place finish in 2019 required me to go faster than my 10th place finish in 2007. This is the nature of Tevis now, both the horses and the people in our sport have increased in competitiveness, the horses in caliber and quantity of quality, and perhaps maybe the same can be said for the riders as well, albeit to be fair there have been many fantastic horse and human athletes throughout the history of Tevis. Having been “raised” in endurance on the competitive East Coast, I always thought I wanted to win Tevis someday. But over the years, as I got smarter about our sport, and I rode more with my children and learned to just cherish and appreciate the time spent with them, on the back of a great horse, in gorgeous country – winning lost its importance. There was no defining Ah Hah moment when I gave up chasing the goal of winning Tevis. Somewhere along the way, I also finally grasped and appreciated what so many of the older and wiser mentors in our sport kept harping on – winning is nice, but the Best Condition award means more. To win Best Condition means you partner with your horse in a way that allowed you both to compete successfully and competitively, while ultimately safeguarding and prioritizing your horse’s health and welfare. There is no better award for horsemanship out there. SO the question then is - did we start Tevis 2021 with the intention of either winning the Tevis or the Haggin Cup? The answer is most decidedly no. I already had 3 pulls out of 6 starts on Tevis, and as I mentioned earlier, I had a very healthy respect for the level of competition at Tevis nowadays. We had a well prepped and seasoned horse in Lena, who I felt could be the anchor for my daughter’s less experienced mare. The goal was for my daughter and I to stay together and to ride together competitively - but cautiously and judiciously. We did want to top ten, but above all we wanted to finish. And if the mares looked good enough to show for the Haggin Cup the next day, that would be because we had done our job as their riders and taken good care of them during the ride day, and our crew had helped care for the mares well post ride. The ride day itself went beautifully. There was the usual amount of drama and problem solving to sort through, a pad rubbing here and there, a missing crupper, my mare not eating as well as she usually does at the first hold. But all in all, it was an amazing day, made ever better by being able to share 2 0 2 1 H a g g i n C u p R e c i p i e n t Jay Mero, DVM and Lena photo credit: Gore / Baylor