May 2023 Issue

EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN May 2023 Page 17 Tell our advertisers you found them in East Coast Equestrian! Cross Polination: Many Top Riders Both Event and Race Over Fences By Betsy Burke Parker Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation Editor's note: This story was written in January 2023. In that time, eventing great Jimmy Wofford and Kevin Freeman, both featured in this article, passed away. Our thoughts are with their family and friends. We're so fortunate to have had a chance to speak to them before they passed. Olympic medalist and stee- plechase jockey Kevin Freeman says he had the best of both worlds he occupied simultaneous- ly in the 1960s and ‘70s, explain- ing that his heart belonged at once to both eventing and jump racing. “But I loved steeplechase best of all.” Freeman says that, at surface level, the two bear little resem- blance. But dig a little deeper, and there’s a lot the same, with plenty of cross-pollination be- tween the two. “Including me,” Freeman agrees with a chuckle. “The common denominator among event riders and race riders comes down to their attitude to riding down to big fences,” says Freeman, now 83. He was on the silver-medal U.S. Olympic three- day event squads in 1972 and 1976, and he was third in the 1971 Maryland Hunt Cup. “You had to love the thrill and challenge of it – to be good at either sport.” Another former jockey- turned-eventer, Danny Warrington, agrees with Freeman’s assessment. “To go from one to the other, though,” Warrington maintains, “you’ve gotta change your ‘eye’ from running down to a hurdle to setting up for a ‘question.’ “Those jump trainers teach you ‘chipping in is a sin.’ You won’t win too many races that way.” Olympic three-day event medalist and 1978 World Cham- pion Bruce Davidson once fa- mously told a reporter that “once you’ve raced, everything you do in eventing is in slow motion by comparison.” “Young people today, they don’t even (learn how to) bridge their reins,” Davidson said in a 2017 story in the Chronicle of the Horse. “They don’t understand con- nection and balance. The horses are being pushed instead of galloping" forward, on their own impulsion. The best galloping skills for either sport, Davidson says, come from riding racehorses, whether exercising on the flat track or riding ‘chasers. Davidson won Olympic team gold at Montreal (1976) and Los Angeles (1984), as well as silvers in 1972 and 1996. He’s won Badminton in England, the World Championships twice and the Kentucky Three-Day event on multiple occasions Davidson rode in the Mary- land Hunt Cup, twice (pulled up Danny’s Brother in 1975, fifth on Appolinax in 1983). He won at My Lady’s Manor with Stephanie Speakman’s Our Steeplejack in 1984. He was fourth in the 1989 Pennsylvania Hunt Cup with Alletta Bredin-Bell’s Macquarie, a horse he also trained. “It was a big part of my life, and I loved it,” Davidson said in the Chronicle article. “Back in the ’70s and ’80s almost every- body (in the mid-Atlantic region) point-to-pointed.” Every member of the sil- ver-medal-winning 1972 U.S. three-day event squad rode races over jumps on the side – David- son, Kevin Freeman, Mike Plumb and Jimmy Wofford. Six-time Olympian and two- time silver medalist show jumper Frank Chapot placed third twice in the Maryland Hunt Cup (1965 on Tall Chief, 1973 on Evening Mail.) Olympic show jumper Kathy Kusner was the first woman to ride in the Hunt Cup in 1971. Bruce Davidson’s son, Buck Davidson, rode races as well, start- ing in the pony division in 1987 and finishing his 20-race career finishing fourth in the 1994 Radnor Hunt Cup on Castle Keepsake. “You watch the way he goes, the way he rides — he understands galloping a horse,” wrote the senior Davidson. “It is something that the event world needs to learn. “With the right balance and rhythm and connection you can go the distance and jump the jumps with as little interference as possible.” Olympic event veteran and thoroughbred breeder Denny Emerson is a fan of the cross-pol- lination between the two sports. “There are a few riders who are such athletes that they can rather seamlessly go from one riding sport to another, and can excel in whatever they try,” Em- erson wrote in his “How Good Riders Get Good.” Mike Plumb won the Maclay equitation championships as a (Continued on page 18)