An artist's rendition of a horse flying first class to the 2024 Paris Olympics. Meet Peneighlopy. Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau
Long gone are the laborious days of boat travel; New Zealand's equestrian horses are flying first-class to the 2024 Paris Olympics - complete with their own passports, in-flight meals, and frolicking time during layovers.
New Zealand has four horses competing across two disciplines - eventing and dressage - with several reserve combinations on standby in Europe.
While most of the New Zealand horses will be travelling from the UK by horse truck, one reserve horse will be boarding a flight all the way from the US.
It's a lengthy journey, but Equestrian Sports NZ high performance general manager Jock Paget says the horses are absolute pros.
"Sports horses, the amount of travel they have to experience in their life, they're very conditioned to different things, so they travel quite well."
Horses experience the full journey from point A to B without sedation, and they have plenty of hay to graze on during that time.
Paget explains that if they're travelling from the same country, they go in the back of a very comfortable truck.
"These trucks are very well-designed to take horses on, they've got extractor fans in there that put cool air in and take steam out.
"Some horse trucks you can even press a button to give them water as they're travelling, so they're very comfortable."
Road travel means the journey can have a few more stops along the way.
"A 12-hour trip is a big trip, so they won't tend to do more than that [in one go], they would break up the trip depending on the horse.
"Some horses are great travelers, and it doesn't worry them and you can travel for longer, other horses, you stop and take them off every three hours or so, let them walk around and stretch their legs and have something to eat."
Travelling horses need their own horse passport - this is usually four-to-five times the size of a human passport. Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau
If the horses are flying internationally, it's a slightly more complicated process.
The horses are placed on a pallet, which then gets loaded into a stall, which then gets loaded into the back of a cargo plane.
"It's not like a wooden pallet," Paget explains. "It's kind of like the flooring insides of a refrigeration box is the best way to describe it, but it's gotta be made out of some stronger materials so it can hold a horse.
"You can put three horses on each of these boxes or stalls, and then these stalls get loaded into these cargo planes, and they travel well."
The New Zealand equestrian team has one horse travelling this way from the city of Aiken in South Carolina, USA.
"It's one of the reserve combinations so they'll truck up from Aiken to New York, and then get on a plane from New York to Luxemburg, and then they'll truck from Luxemburg to our camp in France.
"They'll do the camp for six days and then, depending on whether they get called into the team, cause they're reserves, they'll potentially go."
Horses travel with grooms, or handlers, allocated by the airline they're travelling with. Paget says they're "very skilled people, with what they do and how they do it".
"I don't know what the ratio is to horses, I doubt it's one groom to a horse, but they have very good grooms. I've never traveled with them myself; I've always met them on the other side."
Horses also carry their own versions of passports, which are usually "four-to-five times" the size of a human passport.
"It has a microchip which you can scan to correctly identify the horse and any markings, and it has vaccination pages, so you know the horse has been vaccinated."
Paget says there's "sort of" a version of economy, business, and first-class travel, depending on who else is on your flight.
"If you imagine a stall, economy would be three in one stall with dividing walls, premium economy would be two, and then business would be the whole thing to yourself.
"The American horses are coming on the same flight, so it depends on what's available."
No cookies or corn chips on this flight. Olympic horses need a high energy, high fibre mix of grains and oats. Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau
The in-flight meal options are relatively basic - they're high in fibre, Paget says. No corn chips or cookies for the horses.
"They tend to give them a bit a mash with plenty of fluid in there, so it helps with their hydration.[Generally] they get a little bit of a grain mix, maybe some oats, that's what they call hard feed, and you tend to mix that with a chaff and any supplements they might be on.
"On top of that, horses are grazing animals, so they need to be eating ruffage about 20 hours a day. These stalls will have hay nets all tied up, so they don't get their legs caught in it. They'll basically put it in front of them and they'll chew away at it all day."
Paget says all horses should be treated equal, because "their need is their need" - but he admits that Olympic horses might require a bit more attention in the lead up to an event.
"A highly trained Olympic horse is very fit, and they probably need a more controlled environment with what they're eating, the amount of time they spend out in the paddock versus in the stable versus how long they're getting ridden will be very detailed. For an everyday horse just being ridden or left out in a paddock, it's less important [to track that stuff].
"It's like if you imagine an athlete getting ready for the Tour de France, in that final month, there's probably a lot more concerns around them getting ill, they're more susceptible to getting a flu or a cold or things like that, so I guess you manage their environment a lot more because there's more risk."
Getting a 500kg animal from one side of the world to the other is no easy feat. Paget estimates a return flight from New Zealand to Europe and back would cost around $100,000. From America, it's probably closer to $30,000 - $40,000 return.
"The reason it's quite a bit cheaper is because there's typically no quarantine time. There's certain rules around vaccinations that they have to have, but as long as they've got their influenza shot and their herpes shot, they're basically good to go."
New Zealand's horses will be arriving in Paris shortly before they're due to compete - the eventing competition begins on 27 July and dressage on 30 July.
This is, in part, to ensure the horses don't experience any complications from jetlag.
"Their form of jetlag is kind of delayed. Within three weeks they tend to get off the plane and not have any issues, provided they travel well. If they do have issues, it'll be between that three week to three-month stage - it's the time in between that carries more risks.
"There's no way to know how they're gonna arrive, it's actually a bit of a lottery."
If horses can experience jetlag, can they experience other symptoms of air travel too? What about blocked ears?
"I've not known of horses that have blocked ears since travelling," Paget laughs. "I've never asked them."
