The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [96]
Harry headed out to the schooling area and gave a nod to his competitors. The glossy brown Diamant thundered across the schooling ring impressively—he was a big horse and you could see his Teutonic breeding in his powerful haunches and heavy bones. When the veteran gelding entered the ring with Frank Chapot on board, there was no sign of skittishness. This horse, who had competed in London and Germany, in venues that regularly drew crowds of ten thousand or more, would not have been distracted by the size of Piping Rock’s stands or crowds. With the precision of a German clock, the pair turned in an effortless perfect round.
Snowman was up. Reins loose, Harry crouched low over the horse as he urged him into a gallop toward the big white triple bar, each pole a stair step above the one in front of it. The poles appeared to float in the air, making it hard for both horse and rider to judge their distance on the approach, and since the fence had both a height and a spread element, arriving at just the right spot for takeoff was paramount. Several horses had already misjudged, either taking off a stride early and bringing down the back pole or realizing their misjudgment and throwing in a tight extra stride but then, unable to snap the knees up quickly enough, plowing through the first pole. As Snowman sailed over the big jump, his knees were tucked up so that he had at least a foot to spare. Harry’s face disappeared into the horse’s neck, which was outstretched, making him look like Pegasus in flight. At the end of the first round, two horses had gone clean: the massive German import and the gray plow horse.
The jump crew raised the fences and tamped down divots with their feet. Harry waved at his children, then turned his focus back to the task at hand. He looked over the course, reminding himself of the hazards at the last in-and-out, deciding where he would turn, and how many strides he should allow on the approach. He galloped through the course in his mind, visualizing each fence clearly.
Diamant was to jump first, and the crowd quieted as he entered the ring. He was so impressive looking. Chapot made a small circle at a controlled canter, then headed toward the first fence. Where other horses had turned a head to look at the crowds and the flapping bunting along the side, this horse might as well have had blinders on. He was all business as he pounded down to the first fence. At the sidelines, Miss Sears leaned forward slightly. It was all over in a minute. Diamant was clear, with what appeared to be little effort on his part. This horse was unstoppable.
As Harry and Snowman trotted into the ring, the contrast was inescapable. Harry grinned again at the children perched on the fence, then smiled at the crowd; his horse, seeming to sense that this was a performance, turned his gaze there, too. The spectators responded with a smattering of enthusiastic applause, then fell silent. This was a challenging course. Would this clunky horse really be up to the task? Some in the stands had no doubt read of his earlier exploits, but many others probably considered his arrival in the jump-off a fluke.
Harry held his reins loosely and seemed to be guiding the horse more from sympathy than any obvious form of control. Careful observers noticed that he whispered something to his mount and that periodically one of the horse’s ears would flick back: he was listening. Chapot had held in Diamant like a heavy-caliber cannon ready to fire, but Harry on Snowman was more reminiscent of a Native American galloping bareback across an open plain—the means of communication between horse and man were subtle, though there was no mistaking the vibrating wire that seemed to move between them. As the horse bore down on the first fence, a big post-and-rail more than five and a half feet straight up, the crowd was attentive.