46 SIDELINES SEPTEMBER 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
Earlier this year, Peden Bloodstock transported 79 horses, among them several Olympic winners, via two special freighters by Qatar
Airways Cargo, for the CHI Al Shaqab 2014 in Doha, the only CHI (Concours Hippique International) competition in the Middle East
and Asia. The shipments contained show jumpers, as well as dressage, endurance and vaulting horses. Peden is also in charge of
international horse transport for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games 2014 in Normandy.
Unlike cats and dogs, horses cannot be transported in the lower deck of regular passenger planes. They must be flown on dedicated
freighters and require special containers that can fit up to three horses side-by-side. Before the flight, the horses are loaded into “air
stables,” special containers constructed so that they are safe while on the aircraft. A typical air stable is 9-and-a-half feet wide and
7-and-a-half feet high. A comfortable ambient temperature of approximately 62 degrees is maintained in the cargo bay during the flight,
an optimum temperature for the horses traveling by air.
All photos by Peden Bloodstock 2014
health regulations are lax in Europe. It’s just that the process
is the flipside of what it was for the 2010 Games: To compete
in Normandy, horses have to be quarantined before they leave
their home nation, not when they enter France. Once they go
through Customs and pass an entrance health exam at the border
inspection post at the point of entry to the European Union (a
process that usually takes anywhere from two to six hours), they
are accorded free movement throughout all member states of the
European Union.
International travel was far more complex for horses competing
in Lexington. First, the 2010 Games involved the largest
commercial airlift of horses ever undertaken for a single event. It
was also the most massive equine transport across the Atlantic
since World War II. Most of this took place just a week or two
before the Games began, when the Bluegrass region of Kentucky
was already awash in Games visitors.
For some disciplines that had competition dates near the end of
the Games in mid-October, the international horses arrived at the
Kentucky Horse Park several days after the Games had opened
on September 25. (About 450 horses departed from Belgium
during a 14-day period from September 16–29. An additional 54
horses flew in from South America and the intercontinental region
known as Australasia.)
After a quarantine period in temporary stabling that had been
constructed at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International
Airport, the horses were shipped in convoys of eight per van,
along with their individual grooms, to the Horse Park.
Then, the trick was to unload the horses as safely and quickly
as possible. A highly trained contingent of Peden Bloodstock
professional flying grooms managed to keep the average
unloading time to just about five minutes per shipment. In addition,
the stable logistics team had to coordinate the delivery of each
national federation’s equipment to its assigned stabling area.
In total, the Peden Bloodstock team delivered more than half a
million pounds of air-freighted equine equipment that had been
off-loaded in Cincinnati, along with another 220,000 pounds
of horse equipment that had arrived by ground transport, from
across North America.
It was “indeed a first for the World Equestrian Games,” said
Peden’s Martin Atock, as his company has been the official
shipping agent for every World Equestrian Games since the
event’s inception and also handled the last seven Olympic Games.
The Horse Park housed more than 1,300 horses, counting
those that competed and those used for exhibitions, including
the opening and closing ceremonies. Two hundred of the total
were hauled in vans to Lexington from stables throughout North
America. All the horses were stabled at a central venue, the
Kentucky Horse Park, which made ground transport relatively
straightforward.
Not so for 2014, with each discipline stabled in close proximity
to its own competition venue, five of which are spread out across
the Normandy region.
About the writer: Darlene Ricker is CEO of Equestrian Authors, LLC
(equestrianauthors.com). She covered Olympic equestrian sports as a staff writer for
the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times. Read her daily blog from Normandy
on sidelinesnews.com.
