My yearly blog post reporting the results! I also volunteered this year (linked post in this one!)
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Great write up- thank you!
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So 46 horses (43% of the starters) went lame or colicked? Am I interpreting the pull data right? And that’s considered normal?
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I’m not sure where you are seeing colic? If you mean metabolic, yes, it could mean colic (but not super likely). Metabolic a lot of times means the pulse is hanging or maybe your horse isn’t having a great day drinking and it’s getting dehydrated or gut sounds aren’t great.
And lame can mean a lot of different things- it could mean LAME like got a stone bruise or something and they are head bobbing, clearly off lame. Or it could mean they are take one or two maybe kind of off steps in trot out, vet says horse is okay to continue but rider chooses not to. I actually had the second scenario happen to me this year and it turned out to be an issue with a boot not lameness at all.
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Understood - and looking at FEI rules metabolic means issues with " mucous membranes characteristics, capillary refill time, hydration, intestinal activity (gut sounds), demeanour and Cardiac Recovery Index.) so that could be colic or “might colic if it kept going” - I definitely know of one actual colic at Tevis this year.
For lameness the article separated out rider options vs lameness pulls - does that mean the instance where the vet says OK to go but rider decides not to is a “rider option”? And 28 other horses were varying degrees of lame?
The FEI rules do say that “If after having once trotted the Horse, the observing Veterinarian questions the Horse’s fitness to continue, the Horse will be re-trotted before a panel of three Veterinarians accompanied by a Ground Jury member.” so it seems like a couple off steps would get a serious reexamination by multiple people: does that hold true for national competitions? At the FEI level at least, lameness pulls appear to be actual lame horses, be that temporary dings or damage that requires rehab: they are too lame to continue.
Do FEI-sanctioned events have lower levels of pulls than national events?
I would say in eventing if 43% of horses were deemed medically unfit to continue, it would be a disaster and there would be an outcry. Perhaps if there were more vet checks immediately following a phase we would see a different side to things though.
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FEI is a totally different ballgame, Tevis is not an FEI ride
IME, if the vet sees the horse in the check and then says you need to work on something (like go back give your horse some more elytes or do some massage work) and then you decide to pull rather than represent, your pull is lameness or metabolic even if your horse might really be fine
If you come in and before the vetting tell someone hey, we’re just not feeling it today, then you are Rider Optioning (and you are still required to have your horse checked by a vet before leaving)
I think if you have never been to a ride and are just looking at numbers, it looks like horses are just collapsing left and right. But the majority of horses really are fine, they just aren’t fit to continue the race. IDK if you do any type of endurance sport but I compare it to when I’m training for an ultra marathon and something feels NQR. It’s not like I can’t run but I can feel that if I keep going I might make myself lame. Does that make sense? The endurance vets are there to help you and your horse get safely through a ride.
Now does this mean that sometimes there aren’t major issues like a colic or a horse that stepped wrong and is a 3/5 lame? No. That certainly happens but those def aren’t the majority or even a lot of pulls
In 20 years of doing distance rides, I’ve had my share of pulls and rider options. Only once have I ever had a horse that wasn’t 100% fine by the time we got home and that was a lameness pull where it turned out she had Lyme.
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Certainly typical of Tevis (though metabolic does not mean colic, though it can happen)
Metabolic is the same for Tevis and AERC as for FEI.
Yes, when the horse is deemed fit to continue by vets but the rider doesn’t want to continue, it’s a rider option. Sometimes that is a rider issue (sick, hurt), sometimes the rider just feels like the horse isn’t quite right. After all, the riders know their horses best!
Rider option-lame (or rider option-metabolic) is a grey area I myself do not exactly understand. My mare River tied up once, and she was DEFINITELY lame (in the sense that she wasn’t fit to continue even if there was not a limp) and it appears in my AERC record as Rider option-lame. Maybe because I said hey I’m quitting before the vet assessed? No idea.
When I actually rider-optioned, my horse was NOT lame, but I just KNEW she was wrong. I couldn’t tell if she was going to colic or get 3-legged lame or had an illness, but I knew I had to stop. Turns out she had a pectoral muscle pull.
Most of the horses that are pulled for lameness in Tevis have minor issues and will be fine in the morning. The thing is, a small stone bruise is unimportant but means you cannot continue. Sore feet… a muscle spasm…
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Yes totally - thanks for explaining it!
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It’s unfortunate there is so much confusion about pull codes. Your tied-up mare certainly should NOT have been any kind of RO!
Before any sort of RO code is applied, the horse must pass the vetting and be considered fit to continue. Once that happens, the rider can decide to not continue and the following codes can apply:
Rider option : something is wrong with the rider (sick, hurt, fun meter ran out, etc)
Rider option - lame : rider feels the horse is off or has something brewing that will likely render the horse lame by the next vet check (horse is taking a funny step every so often, horse is traveling down or uphill in a non-normal way, etc)
Rider option - metabolic : horse is doing or not doing something which makes the rider suspect the horse will have a metabolic issue by the next check, even tho it doesn’t at that moment (horse isn’t drinking, horse isn’t eating, horse is duller than normal, etc)
another pull code that sometimes causes confusion is “surface factors” which normally means something has happened to the horse which hasn’t caused a lameness yet, but the horse really shouldn’t go on (a cut, severe back soreness, bad tack gall, etc).
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By your definition, it should have been rider option–lame. Because she was not lame (as in favoring one leg).
But when I truly rider-optioned, it was not because something was wrong with me. It was that I suspected something was wrong with my horse. I didn’t know if it was metabolic or lameness or both. I just knew something was wrong. In hindsight, I bet it was BOTH. I think she had low grade pain (from an existing muscle pull) that was causing her to eat and drink poorly and feel colicky.
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A horse who is actively tying up is NOT fit to continue, so it should not be any type of RO. An active tie-up would be a metabolic pull.
And FWIW, the definitions are not mine, but the ones in the AERC rules and veterinary handbook. The vet committee has put out some articles in the last couple years trying to clarify various codes and how they should be used.
A good reason to always double-check your ride results to make sure they match what happened. One year my mare cut her leg badly on trail and I knew she needed stitches. She vetted out sound with my bandage still on, but of course our day was over. The pull code was “surface factors” but wasn’t I surprised to see the result eventually posted as “rider died.” 
Can’t say I had ever seen THAT as a pull code before or after!!
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WHAT?!? Thankfully for all of us that was one that could be corrected 
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Yikes!!!
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Hmm I am not sure what you mean by “actively tying up.” The tie up was confirmed with a blood test, but you couldn’t LOOK at her and know she had tied up. She had been lame on one hind foot and stiff on the other at three miles. I didn’t suspect tying up right away because (a) she’s not the type of horse that ties up (b) she never got sweaty etc. She walked out of the lameness, and I continued. She felt not quite right, so I went slow. Her pee was clear. Only after 15 miles or so, when we were approaching ride camp, did she get worked up (she knows the place) and this mare NEVER gets worked up like that.
So I told the ride vet I thought she’d tied up.
She agreed she didn’t look comfortable when she trotted out (but the mares pulse was 44 so…h. it really couldn’t be a metabolic pull. Good gut sounds, good ydration). I interpreted it as a pull for lameness (because the only visible thing wrong was slight stiffness).
So I can SEE why it is rider-option lame, even though in my head it was a tie up.
I didn’t KNOW it was a tie up till Monday when I had my vet test her blood.
Not nearly as exciting as being reported dead!! Jeez. But i mentioned it because when you see Rider-optoin you just DON’T KNOW what really happened.
In this case everyone does because I blogged about it!
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This is a great example of why some of us have joked that we need a RO-ADR (rider option - ain’t doing right) to cover the horses that the riders know aren’t right but nobody else would realize it!
And I agree that pulls of any type need further explanation before the situation can be judged. (I guess the exception being if you are seeing the same pull code ride after ride… that I admit would make me suspicious there was truly an underlying issue that wasn’t discovered yet. But I would feel the same way if I saw a similar result in a difference discipline - like a racehorse who was always eased or an eventer who always retired cross country). I suspect you can look down your record and remember the situation surrounding any of your non-finishes because I know I can.
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Oh my goodness yes. and I always think “I should have known better!!!”
But that’s horses.
I was pretty darn sure it was tying up in this case. My first REAL rider option I had no idea, I just knew she wasn’t ok. As a rider, I’d rather err on the side of too careful, and so far I’ve been right to do so
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I Rider Optioned once because I felt my horse was tiring on the approach to the last water trough on loop one (with a second loop to complete). I hand walked the rest of the loop with pauses to let my horse eat grass whenever we found some, and I pulled handfuls which I fed once we were walking again. This allowed him to recover enough to pass the vet with all As and pluses, and they told me we could continue the ride.
In my mind I had Rider Optioned at that last water trough and begun the care taking to help recovery at that time. Which meant that I had caught the fatigue before it got to the point of affecting the horse’s health (because he had recovered a good deal on the last part of the loop). I knew how tired he was 3/8 of the way through the ride and didn’t see how he could do half the ride on a lower tank than he’d had that morning. So I Rider Optioned.
In hindsight I’m pretty sure it was my horse’s neurological issues appearing as he got fatigued and was less able to compensate. That’s what let me catch how tired he was that early, though I didn’t know about the neuro stuff until about 16 months later.
Many of the pulls seen in Endurance rides are no more than the slight NQR many horses in other disciplines often have at the end of their competition days. The didn’t quite have the power, the balance, the extension in the last class that’s normally there. The difference is that Endurance horses aren’t at the end of their day, and are examined for fitness to continue. If horses in other disciplines were checked for fitness to continue the disparity in completion rates would be much smaller - mainly because there is no comparable completion rate in other disciplines. A Hunter who does all three o/f and the hack without the rider pulling up doesn’t equal an Endurance horse finishing all the loops in their ride. The Endurance horse doesn’t get a completion until they pass the vet as fit to continue.
In a demanding event like Tevis the riders and vets are balancing what’s yet to come with the horse’s scores at the check. A lost shoe replaced by a boot might be fine, or be fine for the last 15 miles, or be unsuitable to do the remaining 65 miles. A horse might be okay to do another loop, but when the gut sounds in one quadrant are still absent, or hydration is still a touch low, or the horse isn’t as forward as normal, the rider might choose to option out. There’s really no comparison to other disciplines when talking about completion rates.
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Agree! And great story. It’s amazing how hindsight explains stuff that at the time all we know is “not right.”
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