Lancaster horse rider escaped wild dogs and more during the Mongol Derby, the world's toughest horse race

LancasterOnline.com - Full Story

MIKE ANDRELCZYK | For LNP and LancasterOnline Nov 7, 2024

The morning of her 38th birthday, Sarah Delia woke up with a headache.

The day before, Delia was bucked off a semiwild Naadam racehorse. It bolted away, leaving her alone to wander the eerily quiet, but blazing hot, Mongolian steppe.

That happened on day 4 of a grueling, intense 10-day competition called the Mongol Derby — billed as the longest and toughest horse race in the world.

Delia, who moved to Lancaster in 2017, grew up riding horses competitively in Tennessee but stopped riding for 17 years. She traded horseshoes for long-distance running shoes, attended law school and embarked on a career as an attorney specializing in corporate and commercial litigation for the law firm McCarter & English.

Lately, Delia had spent more time in an office chair than in a saddle. But then she read Laura Prior-Palmer’s 2019 memoir “Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race.” The book tracks Prior-Palmer’s experience in the Mongol Derby, an annual 620-mile adventure horse race that traces the route of Genghis Khan’s horse messengers across the Mongolian steppe.

Suddenly, Delia felt the urge to get back in the saddle.

“It got under my skin,” Delia said. “Go big or go home, right?”...

Read more here:
https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/lancaster-horse-rider-escaped-wild-dogs-and-more-during-the-mongol-derby-the-worlds-toughest/article_211c67d6-9c7e-11ef-8241-637e082bf34c.html