To Barraclough, this was palpable. “I was visually taken by him and his horse,” he says. “He has a beautiful, striking black mare and, being an incredibly talented rider, I felt an urge to capture his relationship with the race, his horse and his fellow riders.” For the sprinting youth, Ardia served as a rite of passage. Speaking on his first participation in it, Pes explains that the concentration required by it overshadowed all hesitation. Backed by his father, who advised him on how to behave in critical points of the path, he became one with the timeless, mystical energy of Ardia. 

“I remember the silence of the crowds seconds before the start, how it was suddenly broken by the clatter of the horses’ hooves on the dusty ground,” says the rider. He didn’t hear the shots of the rifles loaded with blanks, nor the screaming crowd, only the sound of his horse’s gallop as it devoured the road and that of his heart beating wildly. Soon, Pes was alone. “Even though I ran alongside my father, I could no longer rely on him, but had to put his generous advice into practice and manage on my own,” he explains. It was in that wild race that “I realized I had grown up.”