Here's how you race Death, Mike Harry is saying: Ride horse down hill, cross river, go into arena, receive applause, tip hat. Nothing to it, he says.
Douglas Fraser
Rick Anderson
Josh Harry with his horse in the Stampede arena prior to the Suicide Race.
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"But always say a prayer first, just in case."
A short, barrel-chested 60-year-old member of the Colville Confederated Tribes and former Indian jockey, Mike is standing with his son Josh on a high bank over the narrow Okanogan River, which meanders along the Omak Stampede rodeo ground, a couple hours south of the Canadian border in north central Washington. The river moseys among the fruit orchards and cattle ranches of the dry, brown Okanogan Valley where, this August afternoon, the temperature is inching toward 90.
Mike is squinting against the sun and adjusting his glasses as he scans the hillside, down which Josh, a chubby-cheeked 25-year-old Indian horseman, will come careening and crashing the next evening with 19 other jockeys and horses in something called a Suicide Race.
"By the way," Mike says, "I prayed for the horse, not me."
Laughter comes from a few fans who have stopped to eavesdrop on the impromptu pre-race talk—early arrivals gathering beneath the hill, looking for someone who knows about the race. Mike, a rider, owner, and trainer for more than 40 years, answers their questions as workers ready the nearby 7,500-seat arena for the next night's opening of the 78th annual Omak Stampede. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event and multimillion-dollar boost to the local economy features bronco and bull riding, calf roping, chuck-wagon races, and a rip-roarin' beer garden.
Still, the star attraction is the World Famous Suicide Race, the downhill madness started by a white Stampede PR man and hosted separately from the rodeo these days by a Native American horse and jockey association. It was inaugurated two years after the Stampede and held every year but one, when it was canceled in a dispute over revenues.
But Suicide Hill is not about money, Mike tells an inquiring fan. It's tribal tradition, horse-warrior history. "Once you get in this kind of race, you can't rest, your blood is boiling." He nods to his son. "Tonight, he will be sleepless. Once that gun goes off, it's you and your horse. Once you come off that hill and hit the water and start swimming, you know you're a man."
According to the rodeo's literature, the hill race achieved its fame after it "was featured twice on TV's You Asked for It [a popular 1950s reality show] and in dozens of newspapers" and in "a full-length Walt Disney movie, Run, Appaloosa, Run," that starred young Casey Nissen, "a Suicide Race winner many times over."
The race is as popular today thanks in part to a more negative image, typified by a popular YouTube video posted by the Humane Society of the United States that shows a thousand-pound horse sprawling on the hill in the midst of a race. The animal is spun around, then somersaults backward down the steep slope. The video, viewed more than 130,000 times, is titled "Horses Plunge to Death in 'Suicide' Race." In a voice-over, Robert Reder of the Humane Society says horses are not built to endure the speed and impact of the downhill race. "It's inhumane and it's cruel," he says.
That obviously has been the case for at least 22 horses whose Suicide Race deaths have been documented in recent years. Animal-rights groups say a horse dying in mid-race is part of the blood-sport attraction for fans, like NASCAR pileups and bench-clearing brawls. In this instance, it's something akin to a Preakness run down Breakneck Mountain.
Says Beverly Larson of Portland, one of the tourists listening to Mike on the riverbank, "We love the Stampede, but we come for the Suicide Race. It usually lives up to its name."
In the darkness of opening night, Mike's son and the 19 other riders move atop their mounts along the crowded Stampede grounds, kicking up dust in car headlights and heading towards the Highway 97 bridge, where police and troopers have stopped traffic. Shortly, the line of clopping horses will cross the river and climb the far hill, circling back and turning down a dead-end residential street. They'll arrive to a spot where another smaller crowd has gathered, on a ridge lined with homes opposite the Stampede grounds, overlooking the valley.
It's near 10 p.m., and Mike and hundreds of others are squeezed along the riverbank, aided by a few pathway spotlights. Thousands more watch from the brightly lit grandstands about half a football field away. The racing, comprising mainly Indian horses and riders, is held on three nights and one final afternoon. The hill is partially lit, casting shadows across the course, and a big-screen TV in the arena gives the grandstand crowd a clearer look. Still, watching from the riverbank is like sitting on the sidelines, hearing the pop of the pads. Within a half-hour the crowd stirs to the distant whinny of horses arriving at the hilltop.
Ever the race ambassador, old Mike is telling a few tourists that you need a big-boned mount—preferably one of the wild mountain horses (or their offspring) that the Colville bands catch in the nearby hills—to get safely to the bottom of Suicide Hill. A horse can run down that hill but a man can't, says Mike. Even moving cautiously down the 220-foot-long embankment of sand and dirt, a man will fall on his face. The hill is sloped at a 62-degree angle. You might as well be walking down the side of a building.
