With the major competitions of 2021 now behind us, how do you get your eventing fix until the season starts again in earnest?
Here’s an easy answer that offers an opportunity for entertainment and education while relaxing by the fireplace. Sip that mulled cider and read Jim Wofford’s, “Still Horse Crazy After All These Years.” It’s a book that is as much a history of the sport during the Olympic medalist’s lifetime (with a glance at .the key years before) as it is a biography.
If you’ve ever attended a dinner where Jim was the speaker, you’re familiar with his clever blend of charm and wit. That’s reflected in his conversational writing style, which makes this an easy and most enjoyable read. At the center of his manuscript is his conviction “that horses are wonderful, life-changing creatures.”
Carawich and Jim in the water at Badminton.
For those behind in their Christmas shopping, Jim’s book is an easy choice for the equestrians on your list. It’s available both in print and as an e-book from www.horseandriderbooks.com. You don’t have to be an eventer to appreciate the horse world from his special vantagepoint. As he puts it, “I literally grew up with horse sports in the United States.”
The son of an army officer who rode in the 1932 Olympics and became the first president of the U.S. Equestrian Team, Jim spent his youth on the family farm next to Fort Riley Kansas, the home of the U.S. cavalry until 1949. (Did you know that during the cavalry era, the Army bred its own horses–and very successfully, too.) Sadly, Jim’s father, who taught him to ride, died of cancer in 1955. Because the grief-stricken 10-year-old boy associated horses with his father, Jim did not ride for three years after that.
But he soon came around; horses were in his blood. At the time Jim started eventing seriously during the early 1960s, the sport was small in the U.S., what his mother called a poor stepchild of the popular show jumping discipline. And dressage? It barely existed.
“Event riders all knew each other,” Jim recalls. That was easy, there were so few of them. Selected for training at the USET’s Gladstone, N.J., headquarters to prep him for international competition, he interacted with more experienced competitors such as Mike Plumb, Michael Page and Kevin Freeman, among others.
He also had an acquaintance with so many of the big names during that time, from Gen. Fuddy Wing, who was running the USET in the early 1960s, to Philip Hofmann, first president of the U.S. Combined Training Association (now the U.S. Eventing Association) and others who, sadly, likely will be recognized by few in this era. Further afield, Jim even met Queen Elizabeth after finishing in the ribbons at Badminton.
Jim met Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phllip at Badminton.
The great horses he knew are also a major part of the narrative, of course. You’ll meet Castlewellan, The Optimist, Carawich and so many more that galloped through Jim’s life and are seen among the many photos in the book.
The author knows how to tell a story, and the book is filled with scores of intriguing tales, many of which will make the reader feel like an insider. One I particularly liked involved how Jim and Kevin turned the tables on a practical joke perpetrated by a young Robert Ridland (now the U.S. show jumping coach many decades later).
Jim’s heyday in the sport was at a moment when endurance and guts, as much as talent, were the keys to victory. The big players and their mounts were a different breed in those days; in the case of the horses, they were literally a different breed. The successful ones were thoroughbreds, or mostly so.
Jim and I had a conversation about that, and why the eventing of yesteryear (which you can read about in detail in his book) is only a distant relation to today’s competitions.
Jim on Kilkenny at Badminton in 1968.
“Since 2004, we’ve been doing a different sport,” he told me. That, of course, was when the long format with its steeplechase and roads and tracks was abandoned in favor of the current more compact version.
“The only common theme is the fact that we do it with horses,” Jim said.
“Obviously, how you determine your winners is very different now. The old ratio of difficulty was 3 (dressage) to 12 (cross-country) and 2 (stadium jumping). Those were guidelines. If you were a cross-country star, chances are you were going to be a star regardless of the dressage or show jumping.
“And now, after they changed the scoring slightly a few years ago, you have a sport that is judged 1/1/1, with all three disciplines being equally important.”
When the element of endurance is eliminated, he noted, you’re going to get different riders and different horses wearing the ribbons. Horses that won a gold medal in the 1960s and ‘70s would not be successful today, Jim believes. Conversely, he thinks, only a few of today’s 5-star horses would be successful in a classic 22-mile Olympic three day event.
Carawich was one of Jim’s most successful partners.
He recalled that when he was on the rules committee of the FEI (international equestrian federation), in the late 1970s and early ’80s, “the Germans already were haranguing they wanted to change it.”
Why? They wanted conditions more favorable to the warmbloods they bred, sold and competed. The change was entirely German and financially driven, said Jim, explaining that “as long as you had to go 22 miles, the German verbands (breeders) were not going to be successful.”
Not unexpectedly, if Jim had a choice of riding either format, he would pick the classic version, “the thrill of the steeplechase, the difficulty of getting a horse that fit and retaining the soundness.’
He has watched riders looking worried at the Kentucky 5-star, six or eight minutes into a 10-minute course, that the horse is going to hit the wall, “meaning you’re starting to get to the limits of its physical capability.”
He pointed out that in 1978 at the Kentucky Horse Park, the steeplechase was in the infield and we galloped at 690 meters per minute for five minutes–half the length of the (current) 5-star cross-country. And that was just the warm-up.”
Today’s warmbloods are wonderful, he commented, but added, “if I had to choose the era and I were young and fit these days, I would still choose the classic era because of the difference in the horses and the difference in my skill set and the difference in the nature of the scoring. It was skewed toward someone with the skill set I had at the time.”
Jim is a popular emcee for awards ceremonies. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
He added, “Riders these days are better riders in terms of pure riding capability. They are so far ahead of our era. Having said that, I’m not sure these people would learn how to ride a tired horse, or learn (to ride them) in such a way that they did not get tired. I don’t know how many people today, with all of their technical polish, would have the nerve to go down to the coffin (jump) with a horse that’s starting to get a little heavy in the shoulders.”
Eventing’s roots are in the cavalry, as were Jim’s through his father.
The sport “was designed by the military for the military, to satisfy to satisfy the military’s concerns and goals,” said Jim.
“It was a tough life these horses led. They broke them when they were four and expected them to still be in service when they were 14.”
It took horsemanship as well as riding ability to make that happen.
Part of his mission writing the book is to educate people and memorialize that classic era, while highlighting the incredible changes through which he has lived.
Jim has trained horses and riders at competition all over the world. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
And his perspective goes beyond being a remarkable rider. He has been a successful coach and played an important role in governance, serving as president of the American Horse Shows Association (a predecessor of the U.S. Equestrian Federation), secretary of the USCTA and a member of committees for other horse sport entities that as a group he and his family referred to (not always fondly) as “the alphabets.”
Jim wrote the book for his four grandsons (all four know how to ride, but none are involved with horses), “so they won’t have the same vacuum that I have about my father,” he explained.
“That was a serious driving force. In another 10 or 15 years, they will get serious. They will keep looking forward and then they will start looking back over their shoulders. I didn’t write this as some earthshaking thing for posterity. I really wrote it as a memorial to my father and as a guideline for my grandsons.”
(Photos from Still Horse Crazy After All These Years by Jim Wofford reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books (www.horseandriderbooks.com)
