Content area
Full Text
Here's the way sports are in the United States. Humans run against humans and horses run against horses.
Right.
But what's this about a combination of horses and humans running together in a race?
They've been doing it for years in Europe and in the last five years it's become somewhat popular in the western United States.
The horse-human combo is part of ride and tie races in which teams consist of two humans and a horse, usually an Arabian because it's a long-distance animal. At the start, one partner rides and the other runs. When the rider has gone as far as he thinks his teammate can run, he stops, ties the horse to a tree and takes off on foot.
His teammate runs to the horse and rides for the next stretch. The alternation goes on throughout the race, which can be 25 to 40 miles. Each team has to alternate at least six times, and to win runner and horse have to cross the finish line together.
"It's great because it's taking independent runners and making them into a team," said Steve Shaw, a 37-year old competitor from Manhattan Beach.
Shaw, president of the Ride and Tie Assn., practices in the roads of mountainous Rolling Hills Estates, an area that is home to 4,000 horses. About a dozen others in the area join him.
But even if its popularity has increased in Rolling Hills and there are 75 ride and tie races a year in the United States (seven in California), it's not as common for a runner to enter a race with his Arabian as it is to watch the action at Hollywood Park or the Boston Marathon.
These are good athletes clad in jock attire and sophisticated running shoes, only their race starts like a mad cavalry charge with herds of horses and humans running side by side in an open field covered by long, dry weeds and...