By Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

Lethbridge to host first ever Canadian Championships Indian Relay Races

Aug 31, 2017 | 6:02 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Imagine a jockey riding bareback on a horse that’s galloping around a race track. Now imagine the same jockey jumping off that horse onto another one going full speed, going around the track again, and THEN doing it a third time.

That’s what First Nations racers from Canada and the U.S. will do Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at Exhibition Park’s Rocky Mountain Turf Club track during the first ever Canadian Championships Indian Relay Racing event.

The newly formed Canadian Indian Relay Association, although just a few months old, will host the championship event, and President Dexter Bruisedhead says the races are very unique to their culture.

“Indian Relay Racing goes back centuries. Up until just recently, we formally organized … this is our first year to host a championship.”

Teams will be coming from Montana, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Bruised Head says Indian Championships have been hosted in Montana for the last several years, and they wanted to see if it could be done here as well.

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“A lot of teams, such as [Blackfoot racer] Kal here…have competed down in the United States, so they know what it takes to compete with the best in the world. Every so often we get a chance to get those teams in Canada here.”

Kal Jackson will be competing for the first time in the horse racing event with the local “Lone Wolf” team from the Piikani First Nation. He says his uncle was one of the first in Canada to be a jockey in Brocket and Standoff, when it was a lower profile event.

He says even competing in other First Nations events in Las Vegas doesn’t compare to the feeling of racing the horses this way.

“It’s been a great event for me. Goin’ around with the horses at top speed on one of the top horses in the standings, it’s adrenaline I’ve never gotten before, even cause I used to bull ride.”

“There’s not an adrenaline like this in any other sport I can compare to this.”

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