Day two HS5 we had two hours to make the last leg of the day. All the horses on the line looked thick boned and pretty dense. I was suspect of the horse handed to me only because of how stocky he seemed, but the herder assured me how fast he was and we moved ahead quickly to bridle and saddle the Red Boy.
He moved around as he was saddled but didn’t buck or flip out as many of the faster horses would, so I hopped on and trotted around until Bianca and Kaleigh were ready.
Once they were mounted we pointed northwest and the horses took off full steam, except my horse stuck it to the dirt one stride in and launched into a full bronc. The boy split in two giving quite the rodeo. I rode it out for a bit but he wasn’t letting up. I rolled off his right side and on the way down he clocked me in the face with his rear hoof. I heard it crack and as he took off back to the horse line and I stood up, I felt the blood oozing from somewhere on my face. Nothing hurt though and for a moment I wondered if maybe it was just the adrenaline blocking pain from my split face.
I walked back to the HS where medic Cat took a look. Just a small laceration on my lip but otherwise nothing broken or even remotely out of place. Red Boy nailed me in the perfect spot where I’d eventually have a rainbow bruise sequence across my face and a nice few days of swelling but otherwise zero pain, zero damage and I was cleared to go. At this rate I had just an hour and a half to make the next station and heck did that bucky Red horse fly! Once remounted he bolted 23km at full tilt. I’ve never been more out of control in my life. We passed everyone that had left the station just before me and thankfully caught up to another rider miles ahead who was also on a bullet and was able to yell navigational directions at me while we hurled through space and time. We made it to the next station just at the cutoff time.
In some ways I’m pretty thrilled that horse had feet like fire, it was my fastest leg in my whole derby. It might be the leg I also felt the most terror, but let’s face it- I loved it.
