Williams experiences thrills, spills in Gaucho Derby

Morgan Williams competes in the Gaucho Derby in Argentina.

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It has been three months since Morgan Williams, 39, competed in the Gaucho Derby in Argentina.

She was one of 35 competitors selected from around the world to compete in what she described as one of the toughest horse races worldwide.

While the race occurs over seven to 10 days, Williams was in Argentina for a month, mostly to ensure all her equipment was ready for the arduous journey.

Morgan Williams said her favorite thing about the experience was being out solo and figuring out the puzzles of the maps each night trying to figure out the next day’s route.

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“It was crazy, because you pack and you have it all planned out, and then you repack. You change from bags to bags, I ended up having, like, three bags that were 50 pounds. So it’s a lot of gear, a lot of stuff, that you have to go through. And so we just wanted to make sure it all got there with us,” she explained.

Williams was also able to do some pre-race training with other competitors. Five training days consisted of learning navigation, GPS use and backwoods survival techniques and tactics. They also prepared for emergencies and how to call for help, if necessary.

“My goal for the race and I had kind of gone back-and-forth whether or not I was going to team up with somebody or not, and I had planned on starting with two other girls that I had trained with and, I just, I don’t know, I ended up deciding I wanted to not have to. I just wanted to ride my own race, I think, and so I ended up taking off,” Williams said.

Morgan Williams with others in Argentina.

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From the start, she had the mindset of wanting to do well, but also taking in what she was doing and where she was.

Williams had ups and downs throughout the race. She described the entire thing as a roller coaster of emotions. From the first day of her being alone, she ran into obstacles and choices to make. One of her first choices was whether to go left or right at one of the gates to get to the first checkpoint. She saw many take the right choice path and decided to take the left, which was the correct option as she was the fourth rider to get to the checkpoint, keeping her in the lead group.

Riders only get 10 hours each day of riding and there is a time penalty if they go over. After her first day, she had ridden 12 minutes over and was given a 30-minute time penalty to start the next day.

Morgan Williams and others look over maps in Argentina.

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She started the second day with another rider, who was from Australia. Williams said one of her favorite things was riding with different groups and having conversations with people from around the world.

On the second day, she had her first horse swap. Throughout the race, each rider will have seven different horses they ride. Williams ended up with nine. During her race, she had one horse that had gotten sick and another horse that had lost a shoe, causing her to have to swap two extra times.

“Whenever you get to a workstation, or you’re swapping out, you draw your number out of a hat, and you go in these corrals and you hope to God you can catch them. Some are easy to catch. Some are super hard to get. My first horse, I walked straight up to clipped in. So I hurried up, tacked up and I took off, and I was gonna get in the front at this point. I was with a bunch of Australian guys, who are super fun to ride with,” Williams said.

Riders in the Gaucho Derby in Argentina.

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Through the days Williams rode, she was riding through swamp and bog, on mountains, through woods, beautiful flat land and, what she called, the “Plateau of Death”.

“There’s this section of the race called the Plateau of Death because it’s just so gnarly like swamps, not swamps, it’s more like a bog. So they call them rock bogs. Up there, to where it looks like just gravel, it’s just normal gravel, and then you go walk on it, and it’s like a swamp underneath the gravel.”

She said coming off the plateau was one of her scariest moments.

“So I ended up coming down this big steep hill, and it was in the woods at this point. There were like some more woods that popped up, and so you can’t see where you’re going, but you have to go down this massive slope. You’re trying to follow a cattle trail, and it’s steep enough that you’re kind of sliding. So we’re sliding down, and we ended up going past where we were supposed to zigzag. We started flying, and I’m like well, ‘We’ll just go through the bushes’, and end up, it was like impassable. My horse spins around and starts flailing like trying to climb back up this hill because we had literally slid down this hill. I’m like holding onto my rope almost behind him, crawling on my hands and knees to get back up this hill. So we’re both like, frantically on our hands and knees crawling up the side of this mountain. I don’t know how we didn’t just keep rolling down the hill. ... That was definitely my scariest moment, and I felt bad for him,” Williams said.

The last horse she drew was skittish of water. Williams was galloping along a cattle trail that happened to be covered in water when her horse ended up jumping close to six feet over the water. She said it happened so fast that she isn’t sure what all happened, just that he bucked her off, and she heard a click in her leg as she lay in the water after being bucked off.

“Dang, I just broke my leg. So I’m like, ‘Well, I guess if this is the end of my race, I’m gonna lay here and enjoy the scenery’. It was a beautiful day,” Williams said.

After calling the medics for help, she waited for a while enjoying nature. She was looked over, treated for an injured ankle and then taken to the finish line to see the competitors finish.

Williams said her favorite thing about the experience was being out solo and figuring out the puzzles of the maps each night trying to figure out the next day’s route.

Her goal is to compete in the race again in 2026.