OFFICIALLY the world’s longest horse race, this year’s Mongol Derby sees 48 riders taking on the gruelling 1,000km course across the Mongolian steppes and the 28 female and 20 male riders from around the world met in Ulaanbaatar last Sunday for three days of pre-race training.

The Mongol Derby is a recreation of Genghis Khan’s ancient postal system, a mammoth network of horse stations that relayed messages across the Mongol empire at devastating speed. Riders gallop to a network of 25 horse stations manned by local herders. The riders change their semi-wild horses at each station, set approximately 40km apart. Overnight they stay with the local nomadic herding families at the horse stations or camp out on the steppe under the stars.