Last weekend's Tour of the Catskills cycling race, all 160 miles of it, was grueling. Especially the Horsegate section of the course:
The video above, taken during the first road stage of the race, was shot by a member of the Boston-based cycling team Threshold Cycling. Matt M., one of the Threshold members, has the backstory on the Threshold blog. (Yes, apparently one of the cyclists was actually stepped on by one of the horses. Ouch.)
About 1 hour into the stage as the field was descending off the mountain (41.3 mph) we came around a sweeping right hand turn to find 5 horses in the road. They were probably minding their own business, trotting along the side of a country road (as horses are wont to do) when a fast car with flashing lights sped past followed by some skinny, spindly creatures in bright colored spandex yelling loudly. Now if I were a horse (of course) I would get scared, maybe a bit upset, and maybe say to myself “Yo, what are these ugly, weird things doing on MY road going crazy fast?! And who are THEY to yell at ME? WTF!!!” And maybe I would rear up, and maybe run off the road, yes, maybe I would even step on one of these creatures. Well, all of this happened.
According to Matt, the "horse incident" caused some cyclists to lose the race:
While calamity ensued behind, four riders raced through the horses and two of those riders held on to win with a gap that was exactly the amount of time that the field was stopped for HorseGate.
Matt reports that the losers seem to be out of luck regarding cycling law:
To be sure, I could not find any USAC rule that specifically addresses equine interference or “horse play”.
One commenter on the YouTube video claims to be the cyclist who was stepped on:
I was the guy that got booted by the horse #441 I thought i was dead!
