How Does the Family in "Snowbound" Feel About Being Snowed in?
The 2020 Olympic Games were supposed to brainstorm on July 24 in Tokyo, just they've been postponed a full year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. We'll be highlighting memorable Olympic equestrian moments all this week and next, starting with this personal account of the horse that would assistance William C. Steinkraus become the first American to win an Olympic private equestrian aureate medal at Mexico City in 1968.
I first learned of Snowbound's beingness from the lips of John (later Sir John) Galvin, the Australian-born benefactor of both the U.S. and Irish equestrian teams.
"I've institute a horse that might make you a useful hack," he told me, using a vernacular term he ofttimes employed. Like many of his remarks, this one proved a considerable understatement.
John Galvin was a very canny judge of a horse, and when he reckoned that a given private was of Olympic caliber, he wasn't oftentimes wrong. A number of Galvin's choices were made bachelor to the U.S. Equestrian Team and shown in the name of his American-born wife or his girl, Trish (later the Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne).
These included Rath Patrick, who won the dressage Grand Prix at Aachen (Germany) in 1960 with Trish in the saddle and was sixth in the 1960 Rome Olympics; Night Owl, who won Aachen's show jumping yard prix the same year with George Morris riding; the giant San Lucas, Frank Chapot'south Olympic mount in 1964 and 1968, when he placed fourth; and the astonishing little limited train, Grasshopper, Michael Page's mount in the 1960 and 1964 Olympic three-twenty-four hours event. Yes, John Galvin knew an Olympic horse when he saw one.
Galvin had happened upon Snowbound in California, where he was being shown as a green working hunter by Sacramento's famous all-circular champion passenger Barbara Worth Oakford, too a noted dealer and instructor. She had rescued Snowbound from the Northern California flat-racing circuit, where it had taken him three years to "interruption his maiden."
This lackluster career could probably be attributed to temperament, for Snowbound was easily upset, didn't like visitor, and never hesitated to permit y'all know how he felt almost things.
More than serious, however, was his history of tendon problem, which was to go on to bother him on and off long subsequently his racing career had been forgotten.
Snowbound was so gymnastic, and and then extravagant with his jumping abilities, that he would sometimes simply place more strain on his physical structure than it could tolerate. He likewise struggled in off footing, being a equus caballus who jumped more through spring than through strength.
Snowbound arrived at the USET's headquarters in Gladstone, N.J., in early on 1964, at historic period 6, and both Bert de Némethy, the USET'south legendary coach, and I really liked him the moment we laid eyes on him.
He was a night bay gelding, measuring a scant 16.i hands loftier, past Hail Victory out of Gay Alvena (hence his registered name, Gay Vic). He was a paternal grandson of the celebrated English sire Blenheim 2, and had jumping blood on both sides of his pedigree.
Snowbound had a brusk back, a cute shoulder and a lot of "front," and he moved like the natural athlete he was, with a stride that could extend almost effortlessly. Galvin was first struck past the ease with which Snowbound could go out out strides on hunter courses, and basically he could exercise it wherever and whenever he felt like information technology.
No Problems
As a jumper, Snowbound didn't have much more a adept foundation when nosotros first put him in work. But since Bert always started the year past concentrating on flat work with all the horses, and working over cavalletti and small fences, it was piece of cake for Snowbound to fit in. As the fences got a flake bigger, and then bigger still, he kept upwards easily, and nix ever seemed to pose a trouble for him.
When the time came to ship to Europe to give the older horses some competitive sharpening prior to the Tokyo Olympics, there was no reason not to take him along.
Snowbound had a wonderful summer in Europe, jumping a lot of slow, clear rounds in the speed classes as he got to come across the whole range of European show-jumping obstacles—banks, ditches, water and all kinds of natural and artificial obstacles.
Zip e'er fazed him; indeed, I can't recall that he ever stopped at a fence in his entire career, and you could count the faults he had over water on one mitt.
By the fall he was prepare to motility up, backing up Sinjon in my string. He concluded the year with a sensational victory in the K Prix of New York at Madison Square Garden to assist me assure the leading individual passenger award. Clearly he was up to annihilation'if we could just proceed him sound.
With this in mind, he became a horse that we e'er "spotted"—he never showed in novelty classes or the puissance, but was saved for the Nations Loving cup and the m prix. So reliable did he become in Nations Cup competition that in one stretch he jumped fifteen clear rounds in sixteen attempts, always jumping the "anchor" round.
In the fall of 1966, he won two individual classes in Harrisburg (Pa.) and one in New York before developing a suspicious filling in his tendon and being retired for the show and the season in favor of Bold Minstrel.
Dorsum in form once more the following year, I showed him only lightly in Europe. But he had another formidable fall indoor circuit, being faultless in Harrisburg's Nations Cup and never incurring a single mistake during the unabridged run of New York'southward National Horse Evidence, to match the functioning of his stablemate Assuming Minstrel. (The latter had to spring a and then-record vii'3" in the puissance to continue the string of clear rounds intact.)
Y'all Merely Never Knew
In preparing for the 1968 Mexico Olympics, Snowbound once again had a marvelous European tour, jumping critical double-clears every bit nosotros U.S. riders won all of our Nations Cups, including Aachen, London and Dublin, and we also won London's coveted Daily Mail Loving cup with the only clear circular in the jump-off. It was one of the most thrilling rides I e'er had over a very large course.
However, in that summertime'south last show, at Hickstead (England), he struggled a scrap in some heavy going, and we had to withdraw him for the balance of the prove.
It was ever then. Snowbound never really bowed—he would only "threaten" to bow—and after a rest, he'd come dorsum perfectly sound, his tendons looking cosmetically perfect, as if they would never cause whatever trouble, ever once again. But you but never knew.
"Snowburger," as groom Dennis Haley affectionately nicknamed him, schooled perfectly for Mexico. Past so he could handle any kind of altitude problem, spring any kind of angle, and never lay a toe to a contend equally high as he could leap.
We never tried to come across how big a debate he really could jump. My guess is that he would have had to struggle to jump 2 meters (6'7"). But within the range of his scope, he was just an exceptionally make clean and versatile jumper, and equally game as horses come. You felt yous could ride him through the middle of a needle and that if you pointed him at a house, he'd try to spring it.
The private competition in Mexico City consisted of two rounds, the first over a large and very technical Nations Loving cup-type class of 14 numbered obstacles (including two doubles). Merely the best 15 competitors plus ties came dorsum for course B. That course had only six numbered obstacles (including a double at the end), but all the dimensions were at or almost the maximum then allowed by the rules. (They have since been moderated).
The wall was set at 6 feet, and the fifth fence was a monstrous oxer, with the elevation rails set at 5'9" and half-dozen'0", and a spread of vii'3". Yous really take to build this fence to appreciate how huge information technology really was.
A Test Of His Temperament
Peradventure the biggest test for Snowbound actually came earlier he e'er started on class. I have already mentioned that he had lots of temperament—one never really knew from twenty-four hour period to day which Snowbound he would be—and equally luck would have it, the very first challenge of the mean solar day was a temperament test.
As Snowbound waited in the collecting ring, getting prepare to warm upward, a high Mexican official arrived right there by helicopter, with a brass ring to welcome him!
Snowbound's warm-upwardly was ragged at best, for he was very much distracted, and the picture show of us jumping the first fence shows a horse entirely on the curb rein. In fact, as I entered the ring, I worried that he might non await at the fences at all. Equally information technology happened, though, he was all concern the moment he saw the first fence and really jumped marvelously, bailing me out when I got him a trivial long to the Swedish oxer. And he solved all the distance problems as if they weren't in that location.
After the first round, only two had remained clear, Snowbound and the fabled fiddling British pony, Stroller, with Marion Coates. Past the time we went in the second round, I knew Stroller had had 2 fences down. Thus I knew nosotros could afford a unmarried error—almost the whole field had faulted at that huge oxer—and still win the gilt outright. Two fences down would mean a tie and a jump-off, though.
Snowbound was make clean coming to that yawning oxer. His valiant endeavor only tipped it off behind, but information technology had taken a huge effort, and as I made the turn to the double, I could sense that something was non quite right. Notwithstanding, somehow, summoning upwards all his courage, he jumped the double cleanly and then pulled up on three legs. The gilded medal was ours.
Click the link below to watch video of that astonishing operation.
Naturally, Snowbound missed the fall circuit that year, merely in due course the tendon recovered, and over the next three years he jumped many more wonderful rounds for the team. (I was especially pleased when he collaborated with Fleet Apple to win Aachen's famous combination form, a ii-horse competition in which y'all inverse horses with the clock running, which had eluded me for almost 20 years.)
We all knew that it was problematic for Snowbound to endeavor to defend his championship at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and so we had decided in accelerate that if he wasn't himself in the individual competition, I'd switch to Principal Spring for the squad competition. Snowbound did end the individual leg, but he pulled upwardly unsound again. Chief Jump, even so, had the good fortune to turn in the all-time two-round score in the team outcome, and we ended up with the silver team medal, beaten by the German language squad by merely a quarter fourth dimension mistake.
We retired Snowbound, now 14, after Munich, peculiarly as his rider was scheduled to retire at the end of the yr too. He returned to John Galvin's beautiful subcontract outside of Dublin and enjoyed a well-earned life of ease until he died.
Originally published in the February. xx, 2004, event of the Chronicle, Bill Steinkraus' memories of Snowbound, the equus caballus that earned the United States' first Olympic individual equestrian gold medal, never gets old.
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Source: https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/my-memories-snowbound
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