The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [106]
But this year, the excitement was ratcheted up an extra notch. For this was no ordinary year at the National Horse Show—this was the seventy-fifth year, the Diamond Jubilee.
The show, which had started as a way for the upper crust to display their fine carriage horses, had improbably survived and thrived into the automobile era. The National truly was a national event. Competitors came from near and far—the finest roadsters (high-stepping horses who pulled light carriages) hailed from the Midwest, the saddlebreds and walking horses came from the South, and the top riders from the West Coast made the pilgrimage every year. Air travel for horses was rare and mostly reserved for transatlantic trips. Most people vanned their horses to New York, even making the weeklong drive from California, though Mrs. Louella Combs, the perpetual champion in the roadster divisions, brought her fine hackneys from St. Louis via private train coach.
Everyone in the horse world whom Harry knew would be there—Mickey Walsh and Captain Littauer, even Colonel John Russell, whom he’d met for the first time in Amsterdam. So would all of the professionals he admired and who had mentored him: Dave Kelley, Cappy Smith, and Joe Green, as well as his toughest competitors, Adolph Mogavero and Al Fiore.
The show lasted eight days, always opening on Election Day, a Tuesday. Classes ran all day and evening, with so many entries that competitors were winnowed down in the morning qualifying rounds. Only the top horses would be selected to perform in the nighttime events. After a grueling summer and fall of trailering and debarking, settling in to unfamiliar makeshift stables, competing in different arenas and over varying terrain, now it was time for the horse show that would task the strength and endurance of the best of them. This was more than a test of skill or breeding—though both were important. In this contest, the eight-day trial would become a test of spirit—of the quality horsemen call “bottom,” and that spectators instinctively recognize as heart.
Some of the big barns, including Ox Ridge and Duffy Stables, came with twenty or more horses and a small army of grooms, but there were always a few riders who came with just one horse: Jimmy Wiebe, the saddlemaker, had brought his horse, the Stitcher. James Crawford, of Kingswood, Missouri, wanted to be there so badly that he had put every penny into the entry fee—not leaving enough money for a hotel room. He planned to bed down in the stall next to his horse. Anyone who considered himself a horseman and could find some way to get there was there.
To the press and the public, it was the National—to horsemen, it was called “the Garden.” As Esther R. “Boots” Parker said in a history of the National Horse Show, “This was the world where a single rub will knock you out of the ribbons, and a marginally missed distance would send you back to the barn … Any ribbon from the Garden was worth its weight in blood, sweat and tears.” Some horsemen even referred to it as the start of the horseman’s New Year. It was the crowning event of every rider’s calendar.
Harry had two students competing on their own horses in the junior classes, and he had brought along the flighty mare Night Arrest. Representing Mr. and Mrs. Harry de Leyer, there was just one horse: Snowman. Harry was itching to get back into the ring on him. He had been forced to sit at home, getting news from the shows at Washington and Harrisburg only secondhand.
But those shows were over. What mattered now was that Harry and Snowman were registered entrants in the National Horse Show. The National had its own magic. Every horseman believed it. Unexpected things happened: favorites faded; new champions were born in one thundering round under the spotlights.
The Garden. Harry remembered the year before, his improbable fourth-place ribbon with Sinjon, and the pain of leaving the horse behind.
Ach, no use in thinking about that.
Coming into the show, everyone thought First Chance would be the horse to beat. No one was thinking about