34 j**st out • October 6 .2000
Live Music
Kins Brothers Circus. 9/15
Purusa, 9/22
Nicole Cambell Band. 9/29
Now booking reservations online. Enjoy Sunday
brunch, daily lunch or dinner cruises on the Portland
Spirit. Perfect for entertaining out
Portland
of town guests. Break free with our
Priday Early Escape entertainment
cruises — through September.
Reservations and information availa hie at w w w . p o r t l a n d s p i r i t . c o m .
or ca 11 ( 5 0 3 ) 2 2 4 - 3 9 0 0 or ( 8 0 0 ) 2 2 4 - 3 9 0 1 .
G o m m tim e n / c e r e m o n ie s a u a ifa d fe.
C r o u p a n d p r iu a / e ly a c/i/ r e n /a f.
Karen Klpi
Thursday, October 19th 7pm
Unitarian thurth SW I2tli fi Main Portland
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I imilod slidinci sc<ilc lit kels availahle al door.
ne more movie cliche is
about to be punctured.
You know the scene in
most westerns or period
films where someone rides a
horse for miles and miles, gen
erally to save a loved one from
a dire fate?
“It doesn’t happen that
way,” says De Wayne Brown,
an openly gay, award-winning
horseman who hits logged
more than 8,000 miles in
horse races throughout the
United States. He says horses
ridden that hard wouldn’t
make it; they would stop
themselves before exhaustion
set in. “Most horses are very
governed.”
Now living in Northwest
Portland, Brown hails from
rural Sweet Home, where he
got to know horses from a
very early age. “I was bom on
a horse,” he jokes. “My moth
er has pictures of her on a horse, pregnant with
me. My grandfather built a special saddle when
I was old enough to hold on myself, to strap on
behind my mother. I was riding that before I
was even a year old."
W hen he was 9, Brown started "breaking”
horses— training wild undomesticated horses to
get used to human touch and riders. He then
started training professionally as a rider when
he was 13 and soon showed his pet quarter-
horse on the circuit.
Today, Brown is heavily involved in a sport
known as endurance racing. “My grandfather
started the very first endurance race in the
Northwest in 1964, so I was kind of bom into
the sport.”
Brown describes it as a “long-distance
marathon race for horses...anywhere from 30 to
100 miles in a one-day event. One horse, one
rider, for that entire distance. A fast 50-mile
race can be won in four hours or under; a fast
100-mile race can be run in around nine hours.
They’re cross-country races. There are no jumps
involved, just a marked course through the
mountains or sometimes flat deserts.”
For the animal lovers among Just Out read
ers, Brown cautions against fears that the hors
es are being abused. “You don’t run. It’s like a
marathon. It’s very much pacing. Horses aver
age around 10 miles an hour for a long trot and
canter.”
The sport also is strictly monitored, with
veterinarian checkpoints at least every 25
miles. If the horses are limping then, they’re
removed, and if they’re limping at the finish
line, the riders are disqualified. “That helps
keep people in check from overriding their
horses. The real object is to have a sound horse
at the finish line.”
Although he rides one of his five horses in
races, Brown recently retired his 12-year-old
Arabian. “He was just short of 3,000 miles. It
was much more important for me to have the
horse sound and happy and live a long life than
it was to do racing."
So is there a gay group of endurance riders?
“I’m kind of the lone sheep in the Northwest,”
Brown says. “There are several other gay peo
ple who do ride [elsewhere]."
He adds that the winningest solo rider ever
of the world championships is a lesbian. As for
himself, Brown is out to his fellow racers but
jokes that he doesn’t have a rainbow sticker on
the rear of his horse.
Although the United States has a large gay
rodeo scene, he isn’t directly involved in that
sport. Because he makes his living as a massage
therapist, Brown doesn’t want to risk incapaci
tating himself.
“Rodeo didn’t have as much of a draw for
me because I want to keep my body in one
piece,” he says with a smile. “And 1 don’t find
riding bulls and broncos adds longevity to the
body.” Still, he attends many gay rodeos and
often works setting up the arena and helping
on the support crew.
Brown, who is single, acknowledges the
horses sometimes can get in the way of his love
life. “Working with horses is an extremely
demanding sport/hobby/job. You can’t just say,
‘Oh, I’ll take care of you later,’ because we’ve
domesticated them and made them dependent
on us. Several times I’ve had people feel that
they came in second to the horses. It’s difficult
to have someone who is not what we call
‘horsey’ and have them understand the require
ment that horses take.”
Brown just has put on an endurance race in
a state park near Redmond. He’s also trying to
get sponsorship to ride in the 2001 re-enact
ment of the original Pony Express race. “It’s
2,000 miles, all the way from St. Jude, Mo., to
Sacramento, Calif. It will be run in a succes
sion of eight one-week races.”
So what does Brown get out of racing? “You
do not win money, you do not win fame and
fortune. You do it because you enjoy it.”
Still, he’s looking to meet other gay riders
in the area for camaraderie or more. “I’d defi
nitely enjoy somebody who was into the horse
world. ’ Until then, like the lone cowboy, he’s
always got his horse. i n
To find out more about endurance racing, con
tact DeWaync Brown at dw horsem an@ juno.com .
A n d y M angels is a longtime Portland enter
tainment writer with three txx)ks and hundreds o f
comic books and magazine articles to his credit.
You can write him at AMangelsSVP@aol.com.