Saratoga Skijoring Races prepared for year Crazy 8

The Saratoga Skijoring Races will return for its 8th year on February 3-4 at the Buck Springs Arena. It is a challenging event which requires skill, good balance and focus which can be tricky when skiing on the snow.

The Saratoga Skijoring Race’s first year started in March 2017 and has become a popular event for the last seven years. Local, state and out-of-state competitors will be coming into Saratoga to compete in this amazing event which requires a skier, rider and a horse. The day before the event, the Hotel Wolf will be hosting a competitor’s welcome party where competitors can also register.

Competitors will have a chance to win up to $6000 in prize money.

All divisions are open divisions meaning men and women can compete together. The two main divisions are the open 3D division, which is the most competitive division where anyone can sign up, and the Novice division. There is also a youth division and an Exhibition Division.

Will Faust, who is one of the co-founders along with Richard Raymer, helped bring the idea of skijoring racing to Saratoga. The event was brought in after the Lions Club decided to pull the plug on chariot racing due to the time it took to prepare the track.

Faust said with Saragtoa being such a small town, he and Raymer wanted to bring an event which would keep local businesses running and bring in needed revenue, especially during the winter time. He said skijoring had made this town a huge success.

“The whole goal was to bring people to the valley for a fun event,” said Faust, “At normal times our restaurants, hotels, and business are going slow. So the idea is to bring people from out of town to fill up the restaurants and hotels”.

With how quickly the event has grown since 2017, Faust said organizers had to limit the number of races on Saturday and Sunday.

“In general, we try to cap our race to 100 races a day,” Faust said. “That’s a comfortable level for our volunteer staff and, given the shorter days at this time of year, keeping to 100 races a day makes it work. Depending on the division a skier can race up to four times a day. We have thirty to forty skiers competing with 30 to 40 horse riders”.

Faust no longer competes in the skijoring races due to an injury sustained at last year’s races. He now works as the event organizer and will be one of the event judges. Neither Faust nor Raymer had any idea what skijoring racing was before they brought this event to Saratoga. That all changed when they took a trip to Pinedale, Wyoming.

Raymer said it was the Platte Valley Jaycees who helped come up with the idea of skijoring races to replace chariot racing. He said the organizers from Pinedale were helpful in figuring out how to bring this event to Carbon County.

“Our club felt it was important to keep a weekend event that would bring people to town,” Raymer said. “So we were approached by the Platte Valley Jaycees to put on a skijoring event. Will and I took a trip up to Pinedale to see what skijoring was all about. It was a race that was two weeks in front of ours. We introduced ourselves to the event organizer on the track and they showed us what needs to be done to plan a skijoring event”.

According to Raymer, while the Saratoga Lions Club had experience putting on chariot races there were some differences when it came to skijoring. While preparing the track for the chariot races took some time, building a course for skijoring was a little easier.

“We run a lot more skijoring races just because we are not trying to get three teams of horses a quarter mile down the track loaded in starting gates and then racing down the track with three teams at rest,” Raymer said. “Skijoring is a team of a rider, horse and a skier. Prepping the track for chariot racing is time-consuming. In chariot racing, you don’t want snow and ice and in skijoring racing you want snow”.

According to Raymer, skijoring is a good way to get the community involved and to get youth into outdoor activities and compete against other youth. If you are interested in competing in this year’s skijoring races you can visit their website at www.saratogaskiijoring.com.