The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [92]
One thing was for sure. Over the summer, the de Leyer family, competing week after week, had learned to work like a well-oiled machine. They had their routine down pat. Arriving at the grounds of Piping Rock, they wasted no time staring at the grandeur of the setting—they had gotten used to arriving at these clubs and to moving among these fancy people. Johanna always had all of the children dressed to the nines, but when they arrived at the show grounds, everyone changed into wooden shoes and coveralls. Everyone, even the children, had a job to do. Harry slipped on coveralls and got the stable set up; the children helped to carry buckets and brushes. Harry stacked bales and filled the stalls with fresh straw. With the help of Joe the Pollack and Jim Troutwell, he set up the tackroom. Soon Hollandia’s stabling area was spick-and-span—even if they did not have the fancy tackroom drapes that others had, Snowman’s impressive array of ribbons, tacked up next to his stall, certainly livened up their stable area.
Bill Steinkraus riding Eleonora Sears’s champion jumper Ksar d’Esprit. (illustration credits 17.3)
Frank Chapot riding Eleonora Sears’s expensive German import, Diamant.
The big green horse van Snowman traveled in was comfortable enough, but it could not begin to compare with the specially equipped airplane on which Eleo’s horses had traveled home from Europe just a few days before. Transatlantic horse travel was hardly the norm in 1958. Fewer than twenty horses made the trek to Europe for the summer tour. Specialized air transporters, such as the Seaboard & Western All Cargo Freight line, carried horses overseas in air-conditioned turboprop Lockheeds, fitted out with carefully padded stalls. The crossing took eighteen hours, as the airplanes needed to stop for refueling. These were among the most pampered horses in the world.
Eleo Sears’s horse Ksar d’Esprit, like Snowman, was a gray, but that was the only similarity between the two geldings: he was lithe and fine-boned, with a snappy action over fences and a lovely, refined thoroughbred face. Bred in the United States, then sent to Canada, this horse was already a veteran of several European tours and a former champion at the National Horse Show. Steinkraus was an elegant and tactful rider, as well as a Wall Street businessman and a concert violinist. Loved by people in and out of the horse world for his style on and off a horse, he would be featured later that year in a Sports Illustrated article entitled “Thinker on Horseback.” Close to Harry in age, Steinkraus had already competed in two Olympic Games: 1952 and 1956. Of all of the competitors, he came closest to the platonic ideal of the scholar-athlete. Bill Steinkraus and Ksar d’Esprit on a good day were unbeatable. Harry had to hope that they would not be having a good day.
If possible, Miss Sears’s other horse, Diamant, was even more impressive. Diamant was a German-bred jumper purchased from Fritz Thiedemann, one of Germany’s leading riders. The horse had already been a seasoned champion in Europe when Miss Sears bought him for “an undisclosed sum,” rumored to be close to $30,000. He had made a strong showing in Europe over the summer for the young American team. The press had been impressed by “the expensive German import,” and he arrived at Piping Rock as a strong favorite. In any case, people figured that the main competition would be between the two young Olympians, mounted on two of the best horses in America. Everyone else who entered did so at their own peril.
Snowman had been an entertaining diversion during the