A Wyoming-based extreme distance jockey was left to fend for herself in Mongolia after race organizers “couldn’t give a crap” about what happened to her when she fell too sick to compete in the 620-mile trek across the East Asian country.
Dede Anders, 49, was a last-minute entry in the Mongol Derby and arrived in Mongolia on Aug. 1 after race organizers reached out to her last month when another competitor dropped out, she told the Cowboy State Daily.
From the nation’s capital of Ulaanbaatar, Anders took an eight-hour trip to the race starting point and was all set to take the lengthy ride across the Mongolian Steppe.
The race — self-proclaimed as the world’s toughest horse race — recreates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan in 1224, according to The Mongolian Derby’s website.
However, on Monday, two days before the race was set to start, she became violently ill.
“It’s a lot of gastrointestinal stuff,” Anders told the outlet. “I was throwing up and stuff like that.”
The race — which usually takes 10 days to complete as riders navigate through wicked terrain and spend,on average, around 13 hours a day in the saddle — was now out of the question given her condition.
Even worse, when Anders tried to seek medical help at the base camp, she was shocked by the lack of empathy or care the race’s medical staff showed for one of their registered riders.
“Two medics looked at me. They told me I needed nothing but did nothing for me. They told me to ride it out,” the lifelong horse racer told the outlet.
Anders, a US Army medic veteran with a doctorate in medical science and emergency medicine from Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., was astonished that a race that claimed to have “an international team of highly experienced medics” did so little to help her.
“One of the medics didn’t even touch me or ask me any questions,” she told the outlet.
“The other one took my pulse for a couple of seconds. They didn’t take my vitals, didn’t ask if I was diabetic or what medications I was taking. All they told me was it would pass in 24 hours.”
Anders then met with the Mongol Derby’s race director, Katherine, to tell her she wouldn’t be racing because of how sick she became.
“Katherine came to my yurt and talked to me at least twice,” Anders said. “I told her I was sick both days.”
During this time, she claims the race provided her with no medical care but instead drove her back to Mongolia’s capital, where a driver stranded her at a hotel.
“They put me in a vehicle for eight hours sick with a GI bug, with a driver who barely spoke English,” Anders told the outlet.
“I had to use Expedia from base camp to book a hotel, had the driver stop in the city, and get my passport so I could finally check into the hotel.”
She claims being “dumped off” back in the capital was the thing only organizers of the derby did to help her while ill.
“I was too ill to get on a horse for 620 miles,” Anders shared. “But I was also too ill to get in a car for eight hours and be dumped off into a city without a passport or a flight home.”
Now alone and still dealing with illness in a foreign country, Anders’ trouble continued when she struggled to find a flight back to the US.
“I had to call home and have my boyfriend book a flight for me because I didn’t have cellphone reception,” she said. “Seattle is the closest I could get. I just want to get back to the US.”
The experienced rider couldn’t find a flight back to the US until Aug. 11, and once she lands in Seattle, she will need to make other travel arrangements to get back to Wyoming.
As she waits to return home, Anders said she has emailed race organizers about her feelings about how she was treated but hasn’t “received a response.”
“I paid around $30,000 to go over for this thing,” the rider said. “My entry fee alone was almost $17,000, and I didn’t even get my blood pressure taken when I was sick.”
Prior to the drama, Anders told Cody Enterprise that she was making “payments of about $900 per month” to foot the cost of the race she once considered a “lifelong dream.”
Missing out on the Mongol Derby, which she described as “kind of a mess” and “not very organized,” is the least of her concerns now, given how apathetic the race’s medical staff was while she was ill.
“I work in the ER, and I have my doctorate in emergency medicine,” she told the outlet.
“You couldn’t swing a cat and hit a medic over there. I don’t know what the holdup was, but I was definitely blown off for whatever reason.”