For chuckwagon drivers, a successful race has a lot to do with their outriders. The outriders’ most visible role is loading the stove as the race begins. Their unseen job is to steady and gentle the horses before the horn sounds, and to be extra eyes for the driver during the race to be sure the driving horses are not having problems.

The outriders ride horses belonging to the chuckwagon driver so although the horses are trained to work with either the stove man or the lead man, they do not train with any specific rider. It takes a good horseman to be able to work with a variety of horses, each of which has its own personality, traits and temperament.

The lead man is responsible for making sure the lead team is aligned with the wheel team, and has to be sure the whole outfit is pointed in exactly the right direction for an optimal start. If the lead horses are a bit edgy, he must be able to talk to them and try and calm them. The stove man throws the stove into the back of the chuckwagon as soon as the horn sounds. Failure to get the stove loaded means a penalty of two seconds – enough to drop a team far out of the running for a good finish on the night, and maybe even in the ten-day aggregate.

Once the race starts, the outriders must pay close attention to all the chuckwagons, since the wagons always have the right of way. Outriders don’t have to ride right with their wagon, but they can only be 150 feet behind.

Just like the chuckwagon drivers, outriders have to be able to sense and understand what the horses are experiencing. It’s a key factor in having a successful night at the Stampede.

The barns for chuckwagon horses are similar to the locker rooms used by those who play human sports – full of handsome, husky and high-spirited athletes. Well, except for Oops.

Standing about 30 inches high, Oops is a toy miniature horse who travels with chuckwagon driver Troy Flad’s outfit. He may be little, but he’s an important part of the whole operation.

Several years ago, Troy’s son was at a horse auction with some friends and purchased Oops, on a whim, for $10.

The biggest, shiniest horse in the Flad operation is a wheeler named Friendly Nipper and he’s the boss of the barn. “If he wants to eat at a particular spot, the others move. They don’t want to fuss with him,” Flad explains. When Oops was turned out into the pasture in the fall, Friendly Nipper immediately took him under his wing.  The two animals became so close that they shared a stall and slept together.

The next year, when racing began, Flad noticed that Friendly Nipper was off his game. A quick trip home to fetch Oops, though, restored the big horse’s morale and his performance came back up to par.

As a result, Oops now travels with the Flad outfit to every event.  “It’s all about having these horses happy,” Flad says.

The GMC Rangeland Derby is a crowd favourite at the Stampede but not everyone knows that the thoroughbreds pulling the chuckwagons are often participating in their secondary career.

Thoroughbreds are born to race, they often start at the racetrack carrying jockeys and will race until they are about six years old.  After that, though, if they want to race it will be as a chuckwagon horse. Many of them enjoy many years racing as part of a chuckwagon team.

New horses are often acquired in late summer. It is a big change for an animal to go from running alone with a jockey on their back to pulling a wagon with three other horses, so much of the winter is spent slowly acclimatizing them to their new environment.

Older, more experienced horses are teamed with the newcomers as various combinations are tried. Good chemistry among teammates is just as important for a chuckwagon outfit as it is for any other team. Usually a new horse will start as a wheeler – one of the horses closest to the wagon. If they show leadership qualities, they usually find themselves moved up to the front row.

A thoroughbred might have spent only a couple of years wearing a saddle, but once on the chucks, there can be another dozen years of running in its future – and for a horse that will run on its own in a field just for the sake of running - that’s way better than retirement!

Here’s an awesome video on chuckwagon driver Obrey Motowylo and his horse Reno (who used to be a race horse):

Reo King doesn’t like to be called a horse whisperer, but there’s something about the Stampede outrider’s way of helping horses that sets him apart from anyone else in the world.

During the summer, Reo travels the chuckwagon circuit, outriding for drivers like Kelly and Mark Sutherland. During the rest of the year, the 34-year-old is making barn calls to help fellow horse lovers like George Strait and Tommy Lee Jones keep their horses healthy.

For Reo, equine therapy is simple, “The horse is your teacher, you just got to listen to them and they’ll tell you,” he says.

Reo calls his technique “King Kinetics” – a combination of yoga, stretching and range of motion exercises that do for the world’s animal athletes what top chiropractors and massage therapists do for elite runners with tense muscles and lactic acid build up.

Once Reo diagnoses the problem, he helps stretch the horse, moving slowly and gently, watching for any signs of pain. He feels for swelling and inflammation – using his hands as a temperature gage and watches for  subtle reactions in the horse’s face or body that tell him if the horse is hurting.

“It’s so crazy for people to see horses in those positions, but they dig it,” he says about the exercises – one of which resembles a yogi’s downward-facing dog. The key is never to adjust the horse, he cautions but to put the horse in a position where it can adjust itself.

“If you are in there motivating them every day; come in there with positive energy, they’re feelin’ it…they love it,” says Reo.

Watch Reo work his magic in this video:

One of the best things anyone can say about an athlete is that ‘they have a lot of heart’. A new study of the GMC Rangeland Derby horses is going to find out a lot about the hearts of these equine athletes.

During the 2012 Stampede, nearly 100 horses will be fitted out with monitors to measure and record their heart rates and rhythms. Using wireless technology, this information is being gathered during warm-up, at maximum exertion and during recovery.

Chuckwagon horses are already examined as part of the Stampede’s ‘Fitness to Compete’ program and are not allowed to race more than four evenings in a row followed by two days of rest. By studying the cardiovascular health of the horses, the Stampede’s veterinarians hope to have another way of measuring whether current guidelines are good enough or if change is needed.

Conducted by the University of Calgary, the study should break some new ground in the understanding of the physiology of these high-performance equine athletes. Previous studies have centred on horses in other disciplines, but chuckwagon horses are different. First of all, they can be older than the horses in other forms of competition. The chuckwagon horses are, uniquely, part of a team of four. They train differently – and they race with three other outfits on the track at the same time.

This last factor is one reason that testing will not be restricted to practice days only. Every night of Stampede, at least a couple of teams will be wearing sensors during the heat races. Chuckwagon horses, like any other athlete, can perform differently on raceday in front of a cheering crowd.