50 Years Ago Today: The Great American Horse Race Began — 92 Riders, 1,966 Miles, Pure Adventure

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

Fifty years ago today, Memorial Day, Tom Sites and 91 other riders showed up to the starting line of the Great American Horse Race, the longest organized horse race ever held. The starting gun went off, horses walked, trotted and cantered across the starting line, and 100 days and 1,966 miles later, 54 of them arrived at the finish line in Sacramento, California.

Tom showed up with his horse Jose Dante, a $15 saddle, no crew, no trailer and no ice boots. He’d never done endurance riding. He didn’t know what pulse and respiration checks were. He slept in the feed truck, survived a steep learning curve with Jose and finished 28th. Most top finishers rode two horses. Tom rode one.

I drove up to Luray, Virginia, where Tom lives with his wife Mary Ann, to sit down and hear the whole story. Congratulations to Tom and every rider who toed that starting line in Frankfort, New York. Tom put it best: the motto of the endurance community is to finish is to win.

Listen to Tom tell it on my Travel Grit podcast, from Vietnam to Jose’s first steps in the Luray mountains to that final ride into the California Expo with a West Virginia flag and stars painted on Jose’s blaze. It’s one of the finest firsthand accounts you’ll hear of the Great American Horse Race and of what it means to just keep going.

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