Endurance racer Carol Federighi ’82 traveled to Mongolia last August to compete in the world’s longest horse race. It was one helluva ride.
What have I gotten myself into?
That’s a question that, if you believe the press accounts, routinely visits people who dare to compete in the Mongol Derby—the longest and arguably most grueling horse race in the world. And when that happens, an endurance rider can only hope that the accompanying doubt fades with each long day’s setting sun.
Carol Federighi ’82 found plenty of reasons to search her soul during the nine-day, 600-mile journey across Mongolia’s breathtakingly varied terrain, which includes salt and freshwater lakes, rolling grasslands, marshy plains, and mountain ranges.
On the first afternoon, torrential rains morphed into quarter-sized hail and Federighi got bucked to the ground twice. On day two, she got lost trying to take a shortcut, and her horse wore himself out navigating a seemingly endless series of steep hills. Less than 24 hours later, after crossing what appeared to be a small pond, she and two other riders got stuck in a bog. By the fourth day, a majority of the 44 competitors from 12 countries were hours ahead of her, and Federighi began to wonder if she would be able to finish the race at all.
“There are moments, when you’re elbow deep in mud, that you question your sanity,” says Federighi, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice. “But then, when you’re galloping along and you and your horse are alone together in this vast, beautiful scenery, it’s amazing. It’s a groove. It’s Zen.”
Early Rider
Federighi started taking riding lessons when she was 10, but her love affair with horses goes back as far as she can remember. “I was horse-crazy from the very beginning,” she says, “and my parents have no clue why. They had absolutely nothing to do with horses. It’s a disease that some girls are just born with, I guess.”
After an adolescence dominated by Western-style trail riding, Federighi left her home in Schenectady, New York, to attend Carleton, where she thought it made sense to hang up the reins and concentrate on academics. The break was short-lived, though. After earning an undergraduate degree in physics, she went on to a master’s degree at Cornell, which has stables and a polo team. Lessons in English-style riding gave her experience with a smaller, lighter saddle that puts the rider in closer contact with the animal.
When Federighi graduated from Stanford Law School a few years later, she began participating in the equestrian sport of eventing: a combination of dressage (horse and rider perform a series of complicated movements) and different iterations of show jumping.
“I did eventing for about 10 years with different horses, and then Ben, my horse at the time, was getting older and he let me know he wasn’t interested in jumping anymore,” Federighi says. “So I thought it was a good time to explore endurance riding, which I’d long been interested in.”
According to the United States Equestrian Foundation, endurance riding involves traversing long distances in various geographical settings and seasons that test the overall fitness of both athlete and animal. The one-day races range from 50 to 100 miles, with periodic checkpoints to ensure health and safety. And while there are sometimes two-to-three-day endurance rides in the United States, each day is treated as a separate event with its own winners. “I think what attracted me to racing—and still holds my attention—is the relationship you have with the horse,” Federighi says. “It’s like building a relationship with your kids or your spouse. You can tell what they’re feeling, because you’re intimately familiar with their behavior.”
Two years ago, after distinguishing herself in a number of stateside contests, Federighi asked Matthew Graham, a riding companion and polo player who lives just a mile from her home in Tacoma Park, Maryland, whether he’d be interested in entering the Mongol Derby. Graham, a retired engineer, had ridden only a handful of endurance events, but he agreed to accompany Federighi to Utah to work with a trainer who had experience riding in Mongolia. “She asked and I said, ‘Why not?’ That’s how I got into it. I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Graham jokes now. “Carol’s enthusiasm is infectious. She likes hard challenges. She likes to push her limits out in the elements.”
While Federighi and Graham knew that the derby would be unlike anything they’d experienced before, they didn’t anticipate how different and difficult it would be to ride a host of unfamiliar animals. Native, semi-wild Mongolian horses—while they’re a foot shorter than a typical Western horse—are as powerful as they are temperamental.
Down the Stretch
An annual event that began in 2009, the Mongol Derby is sponsored by a London-based adventure travel company and inspired by Genghis Khan’s Pony Express–like communications system, which was unveiled in 1224. Like the ancient empire’s couriers, modern-day derby riders must map their own course and change horses every 22 miles.
The event’s $13,000 entry fee pays for campsites, an experienced race crew, and reimbursement of more than 150 local herders. Because of the dangers involved—dehydration, blisters, broken bones, and even spinal injury—a team of medics, many of whom served on the battlefields of Bosnia and Afghanistan, are also on hand. What’s left of the proceeds is set aside for the nonprofit Cool Earth, which is focused on reducing deforestation around the globe.
Participants are allowed to tote only 11 pounds of gear, as well as a hydration pack, helmet, and spot tracker that’s armed with a panic button in case someone gets hurt or stranded. “It’s bare bones,” Federighi says. “I had pretty much everything I needed, but I wish I had brought one or two more pair of underwear. I don’t know why I only brought three. Underwear weighs next to nothing.”
Federighi, who occasionally struggles with back pain, also wishes her pre-trip preparation had included a more holistic fitness routine. “Cardiovascular work won’t do the trick. It’s a full-body workout,” she says of the trek. “You need to work on your core and your overall strength.”
Still, it wasn’t a lack of skivvies and conditioning that put her behind early and threatened to derail her ride. She was missing the element that made her fall for endurance riding in the first place: a profound relationship with the animals.
Predisposed to burst out of the gate and run wild, the Mongolian ponies (referred to in the sponsor’s press materials as “intercontinental missiles of the 13th century”) don’t know their limits. As a result, some riders struggle to find an appropriate pace, especially in the first few days. Worse, once they fall behind, they are more likely to end up with lesser horses, since entrants on top of the leaderboard have already secured the most impressive-looking of the lot.
“A number of the horses weren’t fit enough to go 35 kilometers [about 25 miles] at the speed that was required. And because I made some navigation-oriented mistakes early on, I got more than my fair share of slow horses,” Federighi says. “My learning curve could have been a little faster. If you get on a horse and then find you don’t like it, you can go back and get another one. In retrospect, I should have exercised that option more often. It also would have helped if I had figured out sooner how to evaluate what was going on beneath me.”
On the sixth day, Graham, who had ridden ahead of Federighi early on, was bucked off his horse three times. Discovered by crew members who were on their way to help another rider, Graham was taken back to camp and diagnosed with whiplash. Loaded up with codeine and muscle relaxants, he saddled up the next morning, only to learn days later that he’d broken a rib. “I couldn’t sleep, but I could ride,” he says.
On the seventh day, Federighi started to gain a little ground. By the eighth day, she and Graham had found each other and would stay together until the end. “We galloped across the finish line holding hands. We were so happy—just overcome with emotion,” Graham says.
“It’s hard to describe, but when you’re out there the rest of the world disappears. You just focus on what you have to do that day. It is so freeing,” Federighi says. “There are other things a person could do to get that feeling. A person might ask, ‘Hey, Carol, why don’t you go on a ski vacation or something?’ But, without taking things to the extreme, life just seems kind of ordinary.”
