Warrior relay races return to RMTC

By Lethbridge Herald on September 27, 2024.

The Indian Warrior Relay races are back at the Rocky Mountain Turf Club this weekend.

Post-time Saturday and Sunday is 1 p.m. and admission is free.

The Jason Goodstriker Memorial Indian Warrior Relay racing will honour one of the sport’s greats.

In the relay races, riders race bareback on thoroughbred horses, and jumps from one horse to the next in each lap around a track. In total, the single rider does two transfers to three different horses in three laps.  First to past the finish line, wins.

“A horse can become dazed, running well past the finish line without stopping. Or worse, it could stop short of the white line at the beginning of the track, mistaking it for a barrier. Transferring from one horse to another doesn’t always go smoothly either,” says the turf club on its website.

The thoroughbreds can  also run in the wrong direction, making a team fall behind. Or riders can miss their mark leaping on the animal’s back and fall off.

The Indian relay is the oldest competitive sport in the Americas, dating back more than 400 years to when the horse was first introduced to First Nations cultures.

“Lakota culture insists that this was in fact the second coming of the horse and it’s reintroduction and in the fact the relationship to the plains cultures and the horse is perhaps much older than that is realized. Archaeology seems to support that view,” says the turf club.

The relay appears to have been developed independently among nations with different cultures having different oral histories of its origins.

Relay was used as war games by one tribe, a strategy to hunt buffalo by another and a way to outrun wild horses to enable their capture.

To native cultures, the horse was also transportation, sustenance and provided protection and it was considered sacred by many.

Teams have three horses with one rider, one catcher, one exchange holder and one back holder.

Horse racing, says Rose Rossi of the turf club, generates more than $40 million annually to the southern Alberta economy. First Nations people are actively involved as owners of thoroughbred horses and race regularly, says Rossi.

After this weekend, racing continues in October with dates on the 5th and 6th and 12th through 14th.