Leading the Racehorse

It is Naadam week, and the local festival is the real one: horse races across open steppe, wrestlers in the grass, the jockeys children of five and six who ride like they were poured onto the horse. A family I had camped beside two valleys ago recognized me and, before I understood my role, I was leading their racer to the line by its rope.

The horse tolerated me the way seniors tolerate interns. It knew the way to the start better than I did, had raced this steppe for years, and required of me only that I hold the rope with dignity. I glanced back at the camera exactly once, grinning like a fool at my own promotion.

Their boy took it from me at the line, all fifty pounds of him, and vanished into a field of forty horses. They came back over the hill twenty minutes later in a drumroll of hooves you feel in the ground before you hear it. He placed sixth and was furious. Champions are made of exactly that fury.