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By Root 1283 0

later in the same competition, the young all-male American team won again, taking home the team gold. It was a triumph of huge proportions. Two of the horses ridden in the competition, Ksar d’Esprit, with Bill Steinkraus aboard, and Diamant, ridden by Frank Chapot, were among the top four. Steinkraus, a tall, slender man from Connecticut, was widely admired for his effortless elegance on horseback. A Yale graduate, he was a veteran of the U.S. cavalry and had been stationed in Burma during World War II. Frank Chapot, another Ivy Leaguer, was considered a fearless rider. For both of these horse-and-rider teams, showing at Piping Rock marked their official return to the United States, and the first stage of gearing up for the U.S. indoor season, which would culminate in the National Horse Show.

For Harry, the summer’s end was bittersweet. Right now, Snowman stood in the lead for the Professional Horseman’s Association Championship, but that would soon change. The rest of the horses and riders would stay on the road all fall, while Harry returned to his daily routine of tending to the barn and teaching lessons in the afternoon. His weekends would be taken up with small local shows and foxhunting with his pupils. Maybe he could get to a few of the bigger shows, but for all intents and purposes, his show year was over.

The glamour boys of the United States Equestrian Team fresh from a winning season in Europe. (Left to right) Frank Chapot, George Morris, Hugh Wiley, and Bill Steinkraus. (illustration credits 17.2)

Between now and then, however, there was Piping Rock. Snowman was sharp after the summer’s competition and Harry knew not to overtrain him. A horse had only so many good jumps in him, and Harry did not want to take advantage of Snowy’s good nature or ruin his legs. Harry wanted Piping Rock, the season’s swan song, to be the horse’s best show.

On the morning of September 10, 1958, Harry, Johanna, the children, and Snowman headed off to the Piping Rock Club certain of one thing: they would give it their best shot.

The William S. Blitz Memorial Gold Challenge, a large gold perpetual trophy, would be awarded to the horse that amassed the most points in competition over the course of three days. Each year, engravers cut the champion’s name and the year onto the loving cup, which was displayed in a case inside the Piping Rock’s white Georgian clubhouse. This trophy seemed to belong to Eleo Sears. Her horses had won it in 1955 and 1956. The Blitz carried a one-thousand-dollar prize, a much bigger purse than most other cups. But the money prize would not have been of interest to Eleo, a great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson’s. Miss Sears was one of the primary supporters of the fledgling United States Equestrian Team. The riders, in order to maintain their amateur status, could not get paid, but an October 1958 article in the Chronicle of the Horse estimated that it would take $500,000 to support the team for two years, until the beginning of 1960. To Eleo Sears one thousand dollars was irrelevant. In any case, she did not even believe in prize money. She thought that people should compete for the love of the sport alone.

Nobody who knew him would contest that Harry loved the sport, but for Harry, that one-thousand-dollar prize would be an enormous boon. The purse would be split among the top four horses, with the top horse taking home the largest chunk of it. With Johanna’s frugal accounting, the money would be put to good use. It was clear that the de Leyers would need to find a new home. The horses were splitting the chicken coop farm at the seams, and one and a half acres was not enough room for all of them. Harry had his eye on a property that was larger—about five acres—and just adjacent to the Smithtown polo field. By scrimping and saving every penny, they might be able to move to the bigger place.

At Piping Rock, Harry was introduced to a whole other level from what he had seen at shows over the summer: not just the cream of the crop from Europe but the best of Connecticut and Pennsylvania were there. This