The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [103]
Back at the barn, as she untacked him and settled him in for the night, Harry felt for the girl, but said nothing. She would persevere and go on to win on other days.
Harry could see that Snowman was happy, and he suffered no ill effects from carrying the lesson girls around on his back and taking them through their classes at the junior shows, but each day, when Harry headed out to the stable, he thought about the summer’s triumphs, and of Snowman’s performance against the toast of Europe. It felt wrong. The horse had been put on a shelf before he’d had a chance to show the world what he could do. Sure, he was a hundred times better off now than he’d been as a plow horse, but he was using only a small part of his talent carrying the lesson girls around the stable. Harry remembered showing the gold Blitz trophy to the horse, and what it felt like to parade him around that swank arena at Piping Rock knowing that he was second to none.
By the end of September, Harry had resolved to do something. Dave Kelley had ridden Snowman to a win at the Smithtown Horse Show, beating his own Andante in the process. Harry knew that there were not many men who would do that—but Dave was not an ordinary man. Dave was beloved on the horse show circuit: a true sportsman, a talented rider, and a straight shooter, a man to be trusted. That weekend, at the Huntington Junior Show, Harry proposed a plan.
Snowman deserved a chance to see what he could do. Harry would stay home and tend to his duties, and Snowman would go with Dave to the Washington International Horse Show—the last big contest before the Garden.
October 10–15, 1958, was just another ordinary week at the Knox School, but the barn seemed empty with Snowman gone. Dave Kelley had loaded the horse into the van and taken him to Washington, D.C. The de Leyers would have to follow the show’s progress the same way everyone else did: in the newspapers.
The Washington International Horse Show was an upstart on the horse show scene, and its founding that year showed how important horse showing had become to the social hierarchy. New York was the traditional center of the East Coast establishment, but with the Cold War in full swing, Washington was rising in importance, with the growing government bureaucracy centered around the nation’s capital. The late 1950s was the era of the unbeatable New York Yankees, but in October 1958, Damn Yankees, about a Washingtonian who sold his soul to the devil in order to help the Washington Senators beat the Yankees, opened in movie theaters, perhaps reflecting the national capital’s desire to rival New York in other areas. That same month the Washington International Horse Show made its first appearance on the national stage. Hosting a great horse show was starting to be an important aspect of a city’s civic pride.
The show opened on October 10 at the spacious and well-appointed National Guard Armory. Two international teams, Germany and Mexico, were on the program. While the United States Equestrian Team was not “officially represented,” three members of the team—Sandra Phipps, Frank Chapot, and Jeb Wofford—were competing for the United States. The Germans had brought a powerhouse lineup that included the 1958 European champion (and Diamant’s former rider) Fritz Thiedemann and Hans Günter Winkler, the 1956 Olympic gold medalist.
As usual, the international division was reserved for members of the amateur equestrian teams. Dave would be competing in the open jumper division with Snowman.
The Washington International ran like clockwork—from the skilled precision of the jump crew to the cleanliness of the stabling and grounds, the city put on a tip-top performance, as though