Karen Kroon and Dominique Freeman walked, trotted and cantered together through the undulating, partially wooded countryside around Fair Hill, Md., for more than half the 100 miles of the North American Endurance Ride Championships, but as the final miles approached, neither was sure how it would end.

“We talked and we talked, but we never came to a resolution,” said Kroon, of Cheyenne, Wyo.

All they knew for sure was that neither one of them wanted to race to the finish, even though the line was on the lush turf of the Fair Hill steeplechase course’s homestretch.

Finally, Freeman, who wasn’t eligible for a medal since she’s not a North American citizen, kept her borrowed mount, the re-doubtable and aptly named Jayel Super, to a slow canter and let Kroon and Rokket cross the line alone.

Kroon, 48 and a veterinarian in the U.S. Air Force, didn’t start celebrating right away, though, not until after Rokket, 11, had passed the final veterinary inspection. “Then it was pretty exciting, but we were so tired that we didn’t exactly go crazy,” she admitted.

But the victory, over 61 other starters, wasn’t a total surprise to the 30-year endurance veteran. “I came here with the expectation to do as well as I could,” she said factually. “He’s shown me a couple of times that he had the ability.”

Kroon didn’t want to race Rokket to victory because she wanted to be sure Rokket passed the final vetting, especially because she was part of the USA Mountain team. She stayed loyal to the team, even though she’d been told the team was eliminated before she started the sixth and final loop with a six-second lead over Freeman.

Freeman, who holds British and French passports but has lived in California for 43 years, didn’t want to race because Jayel Super isn’t her horse. He belongs to Stagg Newman, who’d ridden the bay gelding to fourth-placed finishes in the 2001 and 2003 North American Championships. Newman, president of the American Endurance Ride Conference, asked Freeman to ride the bay gelding because he couldn’t since a nagging abscess in the spring had kept Jayel Super from qualifying for the 18-member USA East squad.

“I rode him because when the gods smile on you, you smile back,” said Freeman, who hadn’t ridden Jayel Super until two days before the race. But 100 miles is a long time to get to know a horse. “I always enjoy getting on with horses I don’t know.”

Newman said that Jayel Super “looked the best after this ride of the three [championships]. Dominique did a super job with him, and he’s not an easy horse to ride because he’s high-strung and he wants to gallop. So it takes a rider like Dominique to relax and go with him.”

Always Near The Front
Neither Kroon nor Freeman was ever far from the lead. About 40 riders reached vet gate 1 (17.3 miles) within three or four minutes of each other, but the field had spread out a bit by vet gate 2 (40 miles).

Kroon and Mountain teammate Tracey Webb, on Faberge PJ, were the first to trot in, just a few seconds ahead of three USA East riders, two of whom (Kathy Brunjes and Meg Sleeper) wouldn’t finish, and Canadian Julius Broomfield, who’d complete in 10th place on Avtar. Webb would pull out in vet gate 3 since her horse wasn’t eating well, one of the two Mountain team riders to fall short of the finish.

Twelve minutes later, Freeman led in a scrum of 10 riders into vet gate 2–nine from the USA East plus Heather Reynolds, the 2001 champion who was leading the Pacific South team’s charge.

Freeman and Betty Baker, on Synematic, made up two minutes on the leading Mountain pair in recovery, and by vet gate 4 (75 miles), Baker had taken a short lead over Freeman and Kroon. But Synematic faded on the 12 miles of trail 5, a loop around the base camp at the Fair Hill Natural Resources Center. Kroon and Freeman trotted briskly into the final vet gate together, holding a seven-minute lead over Baker, now riding with fellow East riders Sandra Conner and Brunjes.

That was the end of the trail for Brunjes, and when Kroon and Freeman headed off into night illuminated by a full moon with a nine-minute lead, they knew the race was theirs.

“We just tried to keep moving so they couldn’t catch us,” said Kroon. She finished with a ride time of 11:45.30.

Conner and Baker cantered up the Fair Hill homestretch 18 minutes later, with Con-ner, on race organizer Lana Wright’s Elegant Pride, gaining the silver medal by 10 seconds.

Kroon overcame several disadvantages to wear the North American gold medal. First was that Rokket, and every other horse from the Mountain or two Pacific teams, had to cope with the unfamiliar humid Eastern climate. Kroon and others said they could feel the difference, even though the temperature reached a high of about 70 degrees only in the early afternoon, with a brisk 10- to 15-mph wind all of the cloudless day.

Kroon, a graduate H-A Pony Clubber from Platte Valley (Colo.), thought that Rokket was more used to the climate than most as he’d grown up in New York and lived a year in North Carolina when she first bought him. Plus she trains him in the Rocky Mountains, at about 7,000 feet.

But her training regimen was interrupted early in the year, since she spent a four-month tour of duty in Iraq, returning to her station at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in May.

“He had a vacation while I was gone, but he lives outside, and they don’t lose too much condition that way,” said Kroon. She and Rokket completed the Arabian Nights 100 (Idaho) in preparation for the championships.

Finally, there was a moment on her eastbound journey when Kroon worried she might not reach Fair Hill–and it was right at the beginning.

“There was 10 inches of snow on the ground when I left, and a neighbor’s truck was stuck right in the middle of the road. So I just turned around and drove through the field. Thank goodness for four-wheel drive!” she said with a laugh.

Pacific Gold
For the second North American Cham-pionship in a row, Ann Stuart, the USA East team’s chef d’equipe, suffered from a sort of embarrassment of riches. As the host team, the East got to field 18 horses, and deciding which four would constitute the team requires luck as much as the calculations they used.

And, for the second consecutive championship, luck wasn’t in the East’s corner. Although Conner held up her end of the team mission, they lost Krista Alderdice and Manyone Praise Song Furka to lameness at vet gate 3 (57.7 miles), and then 1996 World Champion Danielle Kanavy McGunigal and Flash Flame fell by the wayside in vet check 4 (75 miles). The East had been leading the Pacific South team by 45 minutes at that point, with Pacific North, the 2003 gold medalists, nearly two hours farther back.

The gold medal, powered primarily by ninth-placed Nicole Chappell Wiere, on Rebel Fire Bask, was Pacific South’s first medal ever in the North American Championships. And they did it without their trump card, Heather Reynolds, the 2001 individual gold medalist and 2003 individual silver medalist. She’d ridden CP Majestic near the front of the pack all day long, but he was pulled in vet gate 5.

“We hope this will help encourage other riders in our area to do FEI rides and do the North Americans,” said Wiere.

Rebel Fire Bask added to the California pride by earning the best condition award. It was his fifth 100-mile completion in five starts, but Wiere was stunned. “I usually don’t even bother showing him for best condition because he’s usually not showy enough. He’s kind of a big, lazy horse,” she said.

Teammates Carolyn Hock and Barry Waite rode as a team during the race’s latter stages and finished 14th and 15th. Hock said they’d pushed hard on loop 5. “That’s when we knew we had the gold medal, if we didn’t make any mistakes,” she said. So they eased off the accelerator for loop 6.

And that teamwork was why his yellow-clad riders earned the gold, said Chef d’Equipe Fred Clusky. “Carolyn sacrificed her top-10 placing to get our medal,” he said.

(For daily reports and more photos from North American Championships, go to www.chronofhorse. com and click on the archives section.)