Gold Medal Rider (13 page)

E
VERY
RIDER
DREAMS
of being part of the biggest horse show in the world: the Olympic Games. Since the modern Olympic equestrian competitions began in 1952, fewer than a hundred Americans have ridden for the gold—and eleven of them have won it. Here are some of their stories.

J. Michael Plumb

Before the opening ceremonies of the 1992 Olympic Games, the American athletes voted to decide which one of them would march first and carry the American flag. The honor went to Mike Plumb, an event rider. He was not as famous as Shannon Miller or Michael Jordan, but he had done something truly amazing. The 1992 Games marked the eighth time that Mike Plumb had been named to an Olympic team—a record no other athlete, in any sport, has ever equaled.

Mike first rode in the 1960 games, and he’s been on every Olympic team since, except for 1988, when he was injured just before the Olympic trials. In 1964 he won his first medal, a team silver, in an Olympics marred for him by tragedy.

Mike was to ride a horse named Markham, his mount from the 1960 games. Mike and Markham had been the highest-placed American finishers in 1960, and they were expected to do well again. The 1964 Olympics were in Tokyo. The horses were shipped there by plane, as they are now for every international competition. At the time, however, airplane travel for horses was relatively new.

Markham panicked in midflight and began kicking his stall apart. The people traveling with him were unable to calm him. The pilot, afraid that the horse would kick out the side of the plane and cause it to crash into the ocean, ordered the team veterinarian to put Markham down. He did. Mike landed in Tokyo without a horse.

Left behind in America were two who had tried and failed to make the Olympic team: a man named Bill Haggard, and his horse, Bold Minstrel. Bill was not as good a rider as Mike Plumb, but Bold Minstrel was brilliant. Bill very generously sent Bold Minstrel to Tokyo as Markham’s replacement, and Mike rode a solid round on him despite not knowing Bold Minstrel at all. The United States won the team silver medal. (Bold Minstrel later developed a
second career as an international show jumper, ridden by Bill Steinkraus.)

Mike’s best individual Olympic finish came in 1976, at the games in Montreal. As that Olympics approached, he had a difficult decision to make: Which horse should he ride? He had two to choose from. The first was Good Mixture, a Thoroughbred that had won a silver medal in 1972 with a different rider and had then won gold and silver medals with Mike at the 1974 World Championships. Good Mixture was a great horse that had never had a fault cross-country, but he was getting old.

Better and Better, Mike’s other possibility, was the opposite of Good Mixture. He was very young and inexperienced, and although he tried hard, he sometimes had problems on cross-country.

Mike took a chance with Better and Better. He said later that he had “never been prouder of a horse in my life.” Better and Better performed as well as he could, and the Americans had never had a higher finish. Mike won the individual silver, finishing just behind his teammate Tad Coffin, and shared the team gold.

Mike Plumb has been riding at the international level for more than thirty-five years, and he still isn’t slowing down. Could the 1996 team be his ninth? He hopes so!

Mike Plumb has ridden in eight Olympic Games—a record no other athlete, in any sport, has equaled. Here he is on a horse called Adonis in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. (John Strassburger photo courtesy of
The Chronicle of the Horse.
)

William Steinkraus

William Steinkraus was the United States’ first show-jumping star. In 1952 he was part of the first modern Olympic team (before that, only army officers could compete). Riding a horse named Hollandia, he helped the United States win a bronze medal. Bill went on to compete in five Olympics on six horses; besides his bronze, he also helped the team win two silver medals in 1960 and in 1972.

His greatest moment came in 1968 at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Riding a beautiful brown Thoroughbred named Snowbound, Bill became the first American rider ever to win an individual gold medal. Later he said that winning the gold was special because it was not just his victory—he owed a lot to the riders and horses who had gone before him.

After the 1972 Olympics Bill retired from competitive riding. Snowbound, his gold medal horse, was retired at the same time. Bill went on to serve as president of the United States Equestrian Team, and he was the first person inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame. He is still active in the horse world.

Which of his great horses did he like best? “Obviously, Snowbound … was a special favorite,” he said. “However, I was lucky enough to ride a number of truly outstanding horses—Ksar d’Esprit, Riviera Wonder, Sinjon,
Trail Guide, Bold Minstrel, and Main Spring among them—and I couldn’t really pick one of them over the others any more than I could pick a favorite member of my family.”

Bill Steinkraus may consider his horses family, but all show jumpers must think of Bill Steinkraus as a father of their sport.

Bruce Davidson

No American has been in more Olympics than Mike Plumb, and only one event rider has been more successful: Bruce Davidson. Like Mike, Bruce has been competing for a long time—he first made the Olympic team in 1972. He has won two gold medals and one silver in his four Olympic attempts, and he’s also won the World Championships twice, the Pan American Games, and nearly every other major event in the world. He’s often ranked as the best event rider in the world.

Bruce lives on a farm in Pennsylvania with his wife and two children, Buck and Nancy, who are becoming successful riders like their father. His Olympic horses—Plain Sailing, Irish Cap, J. J. Babu, and Dr. Peaches—are all dead now, but all of them, even the ones that never belonged to him, are buried on his farm.

Right now Bruce is riding several new top horses, and one of them might be his next Olympic mount. However,
making the Olympics again is not one of his goals. “My goals are to make myself a better rider, to make my horses better, and to make the lives of my horses better,” he said. “I do think that I give my horses a better life than they might otherwise have. I let them be successful at something.”

Lendon Gray

Not all gold medal riders win gold medals. Lendon Gray has made a terrific impact on the sport of dressage without ever winning an Olympic medal. What Lendon has done instead is take ordinary horses and make them shine. Many people think only big, fancy, expensive horses can do well at dressage. Lendon likes to prove them wrong.

“I think I’m still the only Olympic rider who has only American training and who was riding only American-trained and American-bred horses,” she said. Most top American dressage riders go to Europe to train, and they ride imported horses. Lendon rides Arabians. She rides Appaloosas. She rides Morgans. She rides ponies. And with her in the saddle, they all do well.

She made her first Olympic team in 1980, on a horse named Beppo. When she got him, she had never even seen a top-level dressage competition. “I was loaned Beppo when his rider died unexpectedly,” she said. “He was not terribly sound, and he was basically a castaway.” Lendon
learned a lot from Beppo: In four months, the two were competing at the highest levels and won the last spot on the United States’ 1978 World Championships team. Two years later they were on the Olympic squad.

Three years after that, Lendon won the U.S. Grand Prix Championship—the highest level of dressage—on her best-known horse, Seldom Seen. Part Thoroughbred and part Connemara, an Irish breed of pony, Seldom Seen was only fifty-nine inches high—one inch taller than a pony! He looked like a midget next to the giant horses he competed against. At first even Lendon didn’t expect him to do well.

“Every season I’d think,
This is it
,” she recalled. “First he did first and second level. Next we moved up to third and fourth level, and I thought,
Well, any horse ought to be able to do first and second level. This is real dressage now, and we’re in over our heads.
He was undefeated at third and fourth levels. Next year we moved up to Prix St. Georges and I thought,
This is it
, but he was undefeated at Prix St. Georges. When we moved up to Grand Prix (international-level competition) I thought,
Well, this is absurd.
He won a record number of national championships.”

“I don’t do this for the ribbons I can win or for the international competitions,” Lendon said firmly, though she competed in the Olympics a second time in 1988. “Right now I’m working with a horse that will probably never be in a show. He’s actually what you’d call a physically
handicapped horse. The vet said we should put him down, but now he walks and trots and canters comfortably.

“My philosophy in dressage is to take a horse and make it the best that it can be.”

Like Mike Plumb, Bill Steinkraus, and Bruce Davidson, Lendon Gray is a gold medal rider.