Noticias

On a warm, windy spring weekend, Main Street in Telluride was packed.

Hundreds of spectators, dozens of horses, skiers and cowboys showed up for Telluride’s first skijoring event.

“Right now, we’re located kind of at the start, so there’s horses and skiers,” said Derya Senol, who was standing on a bench watching the action.

“Think skiing meets jorts, mustaches, ’80s skiwear with Pit Vipers,” Senol said.

Skijoring originated in Scandinavia, where horses, reindeer or dogs would pull people on skis. The modern version of the sport involves horses running at top speed while a skier or snowboarder navigates a track of gates and jumps, trying to cross the finish line the fastest.

“It’s a total adrenaline rush. The crowd, the atmosphere. It’s just unbelievable,” said Patrick Smith, who manages a cattle ranch in Meeker.

Smith has been competing in skijoring for three years alongside his horse, Izzy.

“We call this sport a three-heartbeat sport. You have the heartbeat of the horse, heartbeat of the skier, heartbeat of the rider. It literally all has to come together in the perfect storm,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of adrenaline, anxiety, there’s a lot of stuff going on that amps everything up, and you got to bring all of that under control for a moment. Time stands still, and when everybody’s on cue and it comes together, it’s beautiful.”

Telluride’s Max Lamb participated in the competition this year. It was his first time skijoring, and he said he didn’t have many tricks of the trade.

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but it’s really enjoyable,” Lamb said.

But when the moment comes, he said, you just lock in. Lamb was skiing behind rider Sadie Farrington and her horse, Chili.

“You kinda get in the zone of what’s happening. She said what she could do. In the first run we made a plan,” Lamb said. “The second go we said, as fast as she wants to go, and she went as fast as she wanted to go.”

And fast was fast. In the final run of the day, Lamb, Farrington and Chili finished second, just 0.04 seconds behind the winning time.

In its inaugural year, Telluride Skijoring beat the odds. Organizer Ashley von Spreeken put the event together in eight weeks. A bad snow year meant organizers had to haul in truckloads of snow to cover the street, while horses ran on a sandy track to the side.

“I’ve lived in Telluride my whole life, and this winter was one of the hardest times to be in Telluride,” von Spreeken said. “The economics of bad snow, of shutdowns, that definitely created a little bit of a dark cloud over town.”

She said she wanted to create some light and levity.

“I think that it was important that we did something that brought some joy and brightness and some excitement,” she said. “Anyone who came to the event knows how it felt and what it was like. That was the secret sauce, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

Rosie Rogers, Seven and Kolby Ward won Saturday’s races.

Jed Moore, Zombie and Ward — competing again — won on Sunday.

As for Telluride Skijoring, organizers say this year was just the beginning. They plan to bring the event back in 2027.