A second book dealing with the history of endurance riding in South Africa will soon be on the shelves and according to Dr van Dam the book is intended to coincide with the annual National Endurance Riding Championships (commonly known as the Fauresmith 200) that will take place for the 40^th time from 2 to 4 July this year.
 

Dr van Dam is, however, not new to writing about topics such as these and has been writing articles about endurance riding and related aspects for the lay press for many years. Among others, he has also overseen the endurance riding supplement of the SA Horseman and the internal newsletter of the Endurance Riding Association of South Africa (ERASA).

The idea for the first book came about when the book’s photographer, Anzel Potgieter, whose mother is also an endurance riding participant, accompanied her mother to Fauresmith in 2010 and took many photographs at the event. Being an honours student at the University of Pretoria at the time, she then did the lay-out of a book as one of her projects. The book contained her own photographs and she used some articles from the web as text, of which some were written by Dr van Dam. A friend of Anzel’s mother (also an endurance rider) then suggested to her to publish the book after which they approached Dr van Dam. And so the process was put in motion to publish the book including the search for a publisher.

Dr van Dam then renewed and reviewed some of his articles and he requested Anzel to also take some additional photographs to more effectively illustrate certain aspects in the text. Anzel was also responsible for the lay-out of the book. After much deliberation about font sizes and the number of photographs, they found the perfect balance and 18 months later the book was published.