A new sports frontier: 800 miles at a gallop

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — This is either madcap dreaming or the genesis of an American sports tradition: a horseback race from the historic plaza in Santa Fe, N.M., to the historic square in Independence, Mo.

That's 800 miles, give or take, along the storied Santa Fe Trail.

Organizers are calling it The Great Santa Fe Trail Horse Race, proposed as an annual event with the first race scheduled for September 2007. The race would traverse northeastern New Mexico and the Oklahoma Panhandle, run the breadth of Kansas and end on Missouri's western edge. Each leg of the two-week event would stop at a "race village," spaced at intervals of 50 to 80 miles.

One hundred teams would compete for a $100,000 purse. Each team would field one rider and 10 horses.

"Hidalgo" meets the Tour de France, perhaps. You may pause to think about that.

Is it a crazy idea?

"We've been talking to people about this all over the country," said Rob Phillips, one of the race organizers and owner of Free State Farm in Lawrence, Kan. "I'm waiting for someone to jump up and tell me I'm stupid, but it hasn't happened yet."

Information

Great Santa Fe Trail Horse Race: A Web site is under construction — www.sfthorserace.com.

The trail helps fire the imagination. It was about commerce, first of all, but also about bridging Anglo and Hispanic cultures, while, alas, plowing through lands first inhabited by Native Americans.

And the trail was a two-way trade route fording America's prairie rivers and grasslands. Its 60-year run ended in 1880, when rail reached Santa Fe.

The legend

Phillips, who runs the farm and an inn with his wife, Beverly, first heard the idea of a trail race from Jim Gray, who owns Drovers Mercantile, an Old West store in Ellsworth, Kan., and is a fan of all things cowboy and frontier.

For Gray, the trail brings to mind one of its most colorful characters, trader Francis X. Aubry.

Aubry, all of about 100 pounds, made a $1,000 bet he could sprint on horseback from Santa Fe to Independence in less than six days, a ridiculous claim.

He rode into Independence five days and 16 hours later, an exhausted pile of flesh in a blood-caked saddle.

"He was just one of those driven characters who wanted to do things bigger, better and faster than anyone else," Gray said.

Gray also has long been a fan of the Tour de France, and his idea for a trail race has simmered for years.

"I honestly thought it was too big a process to ever accomplish," he said.

In segments

Aubry's feat had its dark side. During his record-breaking ride, some of his replacement horses were stolen, so Aubry rode his available horses all the harder. Some died.

This is where the inspiration from Aubry ends and the inspiration from the Tour de France begins.

The Great Santa Fe Trail Horse Race would be run in segments, Phillips said, and teams would use three or four horses a leg, keeping the distance per horse to less than 30 miles a day. Each team would have 10 horses. Assuming 100 teams, that's 1,000 horses.

"It's like moving a little army every day," Gray said.

Phillips, Gray and another member of the organizing team, John Curry, met with officials in Santa Fe in February to introduce the idea and talk about logistics. One of the first matters was where to stage the start of the race.

"We have a racetrack that's not being used anymore," said Dennis Latta, director of the New Mexico Sports Authority. "We have 1,200 stalls."

It so happens that New Mexico is in the midst of a giant push to lure sporting events to the state. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association recently announced the move of its headquarters and ProRodeo Hall of Fame from Colorado to Albuquerque. And the state has a strong horse tradition.

"The race fits the culture of New Mexico well," Latta said.

Other issues need to be tackled, including a route through the mountainous area between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, N.M. Also, the horses would require about 25,000 gallons of water a day.

Most northeastern New Mexico towns don't receive much attention, Latta said. The race could be a boost, the biggest event of the year.

Organizers plan discussions with other towns along the race route, which generally would follow the auto-tour route of the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. Through Kansas, that's basically U.S. 56. The race would be along the trail's Cimarron Cutoff rather than Mountain Branch, which arced into Colorado.

Would the race attract participants? Vickie Ives, a Texas horse breeder, said the large prize money and the publicity would generate plenty of interest.

"And the lore will attract riders to the race," Ives said of the Santa Fe Trail history. Ives is owner of Karma Farms in Marshall, Texas, a top breeder of colonial Spanish mustangs. She was a consultant on "Hidalgo," the 2004 Disney film about a horse race across the Arabian desert.

The race would be a novelty, Ives said, not like any existing endurance horse races. Many of those races feature distances of 25 to 100 miles, with each entry being one rider on one horse.

The race also would need spectators. Those intrigued by the history of the American West can be counted in.

"My immediate reaction — very excited," said George Donoho Bayless, president of the Santa Fe Trail Association. "It'll create a lot of interest in Santa Fe Trail history."

Phillips predicted the race would intrigue anyone drawn to spectacle and competition, especially races without motors.

Gray, too, hopes for international interest. The race could draw teams and fans from many horse-loving countries, including Mexico, Argentina and Arab nations.

Getting started

Besides Phillips and Gray, the organizing group includes Curry, a retired Sprint employee from Olathe, Kan.; artists Jim Brothers and Stan Herd of Lawrence, Kan.; and Lena Tsiovkh, a Lawrence High School student and equestrian.

A budget for the first race has been outlined — about $1.5 million.

The exact route, which could include parts of the historic trail, highway rights-of-way and even dry riverbeds, needs to be determined.

Devising rules, with help from those who run endurance horse races, is on the initial to-do list, as is writing the requirements for horse care and safety during the race.

Sponsors are a must, and TV coverage would be nice. Of course, they've only been working on this about six weeks.

"It's a whirlwind," Gray said.