Plenty of time to acclimate and riding a different kind of race. That’s the bottom line to Cia Reis’ victory on Catch A Wave in the Pan American Endurance Championships on Sept. 13 in Trout Lake, Wash.

With a blazing ride time of 9:14.13, Reis, of Pennsdale, Pa., and Catch A Wave, 15, captured the individual gold medal from defending champion Heather Bergantz Reynolds of Morgan Hill, Calif., on Aleclipse (9:37.40) and Vickie Crance of Irvine, Ky., on RA Jestic Diamond (9:43.13). Reis’ time was 1:25 faster than Reynolds’ 2001 winning time in Woodstock, Vt.

Reis and her husband, Alex, spent seven days driving Catch A Wave from Pennsylvania to the championships, where the ride camp was set up at the foot of 12,307-foot Mt. Adams, one of four volcanic peaks near the border between Washington and Oregon. (The others are Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood.) Reis, 49, rode “Wave” wherever they stopped along the way, and reached Trout Lake exactly two weeks before the ride, a week before the rest of the USA-East contingent. And then she decided that, if Wave were going to win, she had to keep him closer to the early pace than she usually does.

They were never out of the top six. “I don’t usually do that,” Reis admitted. She reached vet check 2 (40 miles) with Lois McAfee, another USA-East individual rider, closely followed by former two- time World Champion Valerie Kanavy, who was leading the USA-East team charge. But Kanavy’s Emphatic was pulled for lameness there, and Wave, vetting faster than McAfee’s Gallant Legacy, left on top at 11:15 a.m. At this point, the leaders were averaging a speedy 11.17 miles per hour.

Reis’ average speed at the end of 100 miles would be 10.75 mph. Reis and Wave then turned back challenges from, first, Alexandra Luck on Mommesin (who’d finish eighth and lead her USA-Central team to the silver medal), Stagg Newman on Jayel Super (who’d finish fourth), and then Reynolds. “It went exactly how I expected it to go. I came here expecting to win,” said a tired but glowing Reis a few minutes after crossing the finish line, just before darkness fell. “I decided I wanted to win,” said Reis, who finished the 2002 World Championships in 31st place while fighting a gastro-intestinal disorder and who missed the 2001 Pan American Championships when Catch A Wave scraped his leg on a corral fence three days before the race.

Before the race, Reis told Ann Stuart, the USA-East chef d’equipe, that she didn’t want to be on the team so she’d be free to go for the individual gold “because Wave has a perfect 100-mile record, and I wanted to give him the title.” Plus, “I was seriously considering retiring him, but now I have a lot to think about,” she added, referring to the 2004 World Championships. Catch A Wave also earned the best condition award from the ride’s veterinarians.

They Found The “Fine Line”
Jim Brown, chef d’equipe of the Pacific-North team, knew he had two riders he could count on to be fast and to finish, but it wasn’t until just before the deadline of 1 p.m. on Friday that he decided on the other two. “Historically in these kind of races, a little more than 50 percent of the field finishes, but 50 percent just isn’t good enough in the team competition. And if you want to win, they have to have the times. It’s a very fine line,” said Brown, whose squad handily grabbed the team gold medal by 2:11 from USA-Mountain.

“You have to be in the hunt from the get-go; you can’t just hang back and wait, if you want to win.”Canada-West claimed the bronze by conservatively finishing all four horses, the only team to do so. The other four teams were eliminated. USA-East and Canada-East each lost two horses; USA-Central and Pacific-South each lost three horses. Brown and his four co-chefs d’equipe started with 46 nominated horses, which they whittled down to a squad of 18. Eventually, he picked the team from among eight horses, in part basing their decision on the riders’ expressed willingness to make the team medal their No. 1 priority.

Eleven of the 18 horses Pacific-North got to start as the host region finished, with five making the top 20. “Obviously, I was pleased with our decision,” said Brown. His two clear choices were Sharon Westergard on MCM Phantazem and Pat Murray on CR Flash Gordon, both from Oregon.

Murray had ridden the Mt. Adams trails before, and she and Westergard regularly ride together. And that’s exactly what they did at the championships, moving up steadily together to complete the ride in fifth and sixth places, 46 minutes behind Reis. “Either one of them could have won it, but our plan was to get the team gold,” said Brown.

Michele Roush of Auburn, Calif., provided the key third score on PR Tallymark, finishing 13th just over 26 minutes later. She and their fourth team member, Cassandra Schuler, had planned to ride together too, but Schuler’s ELD Triton came up lame with a sore right front heel in vet check 2. They knew the team to beat was USA-East, the defending champions and the squad with the most depth of internationally experienced riders, starting with Kanavy, Reis and Newman.

For Stuart, it was almost a case of too much of a good thing. “We had a lot to consider with each horse and rider,” she said in understatement. She and the selection committee evaluated their records, especially over similar terrain and conditions, evaluated the horses daily during the week before the race, and then asked the riders their plans. “And then we spent literally hours discussing it,” said Stuart. “We could have had three teams.”

Of the 12 horses USA-East started, eight finished