An extreme distance jockey has been abandoned in Mongolia after falling seriously ill just days before competing in the world’s toughest horse race.
Dede Anders, 49, was excited to compete in the nine-day 2024 Mongol Derby, but on Monday she began to feel ill and knew she wouldn’t be able to endure the 620-mile trek across the Mongolian steppe.
But when she voiced her concerns to medical staff at the derby, Anders said she was ignored and told to “let it go.” he told Cowboy State Daily.
When she again argued that she did not feel well enough to ride a “semi-wild” Mongolian horse for days at a time, event organizers booked her a taxi back to the capital city of Ulaanbaatar but did not arrange for her to get a hotel room or book her a flight back to the United States, leaving her to find her way home.
Dede Anders, 49, was stranded in Mongolia after becoming too ill to compete in the 2024 Mongolian Derby.
Wyoming’s Anders said he was looking forward to the derby.
She He told the Powell Tribune how she jumped wild horses as a child and became a barrel racer and team roper when she was old enough.
“I’ve been riding horses all my life,” she said. “I grew up on a small ranch in Greybull and I ride horses almost every day when I’m home.”
So when he heard about the Mongol Derby, a notoriously treacherous race founded in 2009, he thought it was a dream come true.
“All the girls read books about Mongolian horses, Black Beauty and all that stuff,” she said.
“I had been thinking about horse endurance racing, so I signed up.”
She said she was looking forward to the 620-mile race and thought she was ready for the endurance competition.
She filled out a questionnaire for The Equestrianists, the organization that runs the Mongol Derby, and sent in videos of herself riding.
For several months, she said she received no response from the group and began to lose hope.
“In October last year I saw an article in another magazine about the derby and I was so angry that I didn’t even want to read it, but that night they called me,” Anders said.
Race organizers told him at the time that he was on the waiting list for the 2025 Mongol Derby, but when another jockey dropped out of this year’s competition a few months ago, Anders was able to take his place.
“I may be crazy, but I’m ready,” she said. he told Cowboy State Daily last month.
She decided she would ride to raise money for Wyo Hoofbeats Equine Assisted Learning, a nonprofit that provides equine-assisted learning programs and psychotherapy for seniors, at-risk children, and families and individuals dealing with mental health issues.
But he said his first goal would be to finish the dangerous race.
“I have siblings who will scold me if I don’t finish, so that’s another motivating factor,” he said.
Anders arrived in Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar on August 1, but began feeling unwell on Monday.
After months of preparation, Anders arrived in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar on August 1 and was taken to the derby starting point eight hours away along with other riders.
Then she started feeling sick on Monday.
“It was a lot of gastrointestinal issues,” Anders said. “I was throwing up and stuff like that.”
Two doctors at base camp then examined her.
“They told me I didn’t need anything, but they didn’t do anything for me,” Anders said. “They told me to just hang in there.”
“One of the doctors didn’t even touch me or ask me any questions,” she continued.
“The other one took my pulse for a couple of seconds. They didn’t take my vitals, they didn’t ask me if I was diabetic or what medications I was on,” said Anders, who is a former U.S. Army medic with a doctorate in medical sciences and emergency medicine from Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee.
“The only thing they told me was that it would happen in 24 hours.”
But Anders realized that although she was not considered “seriously ill,” she was not well enough to endure the walk.
She said she discussed her concerns with race director Katherine.
“Katherine came to my yurt and talked to me at least twice. I told her I had been sick for both days,” Anders said.
Riders ride ‘semi-wild’ horses across Mongolian steppe in nine-day race
Race directors eventually arranged for a driver to take her back to Ulaanbaatar, but they did not book her a hotel or a flight back to the U.S.
“I was put in a vehicle for eight hours, sick with a gastrointestinal virus, with a driver who barely spoke English,” Anders lamented.
‘I had to use Expedia from base camp to book a hotel, had the driver stop in town and pick up my passport so I could finally check into a hotel.’
Now he says he wishes the derby organisers would do more.
“I was too sick to travel 1,000 kilometres on horseback, but I was also too sick to travel eight hours by car and be left in a city without a passport or a flight home.”
Anders said he has since reached out to the event organizers but has not received a response.
“Now I’m stuck here and they don’t care about anything,” she said, noting that the first flight she could catch doesn’t leave until Sunday and will only take her as far as Seattle, Washington.
“I just want to go back to the United States,” he said.
Anders described the experience as “kind of a mess” and “poorly organized.”
But he also hopes to be reimbursed for his travel and entry costs.
“I paid about $30,000 to participate in this trial,” Anders said. “The registration fee alone was almost $17,000, and they didn’t even take my blood pressure when I was sick.”
Overall, Anders says the experience he was expecting has been “a bit chaotic” and “not very organized.”
“I wake up at 1:30 in the morning to vomit on the Mongolian steppe, and I’m blasting Miley Cyrus’ Party in the USA and everyone’s drunk,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
‘I told the race director that if he wanted to see Miley Cyrus blasting at 1:30 in the morning, he would have gone to any trailer park in Wyoming.’
DailyMail.com has contacted The Equestrianists for comment.
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