Go Horse – Discovering Endurance

Endurance, (in Italian “Resistenza“) , is one of the most widespread equestrian sports in the world. The racing consist of endurance races on various kind of routes and a mileage that varies from 30 to 160 km depending on the categories. The most suitable horses for this sport are the Arabs and Anglo-Arabs. Discover now all our trips, tours, holidays and horse trekking in the USA. One of the peculiarities of this discipline is the attention to the health of the horse . In fact, every 30–35 km the animal undergoes a thorough veterinary examination in which heartbeat, dehydration, color of the mucous membranes, bowel movements, breathing, injuries and gait, that is the metabolic and mechanical parameters that allow to evaluate if the conditions of the horse are suitable for the rest of the competition, are checked.

If one or more of these benchmarks were out of the norm, the horse would be “eliminated” from the competition. The Equestrian endurance has its roots in the resistance marches organized at the beginning of the last century in Europe, in which the Cavalry officers of the main European nations tested their best horses in grueling courses of several hundred kilometers. The first tests of modern Endurance were instead disputed starting from 1954 in California (United States of America), along the Western States Trail, that is a path that followed the one used between 1860 and 1861 by “pony-express”. This is the path of the most important Endurance competition in the world called Tevis Cup .

Soon these competitions spread also in Europe and in particular in France and Spain . With the interest of some Arab sheikhs, and in particular of the Al-Maktoum and Al-Nahjan families, that is the Royal Families of the Emirate of Dubai and Abu Dhabi , this sport saw a noticeable and sudden growth in the late nineties..