THINK back to the sporting highlights of 1978 – Cork and Kerry won All Ireland hurling and football finals and host nation Argentina won the FIFA World Cup.
The Fred Winter-trained Midnight Court won the Cheltenham Gold Cup; Shirley Heights won the Derby at Epsom and Eddie Macken, part of that year’s winning Aga Khan ‘dream team’, won a silver medal at the world show jumping championships at Aachen.
Ireland had another silver medallist in equestrian sports that year when John Watson and Cambridge Blue fought their way up the Lexington leader board to a podium finish.
“1978 was Blue’s peak. His fifth place at Badminton allowed Tommy Ryan of Bord na gCapall to plead that when the potential for a team to the world championships fell apart, he could be allowed send me with Blue as an individual. It was a good year for Tommy as Eddie Macken also won world individual silver on Boomerang. So off we went, with Jock Ferrie in charge of me, Blue and Julia as groom, though really she was the one in charge!”
1978 was also the year the $27 million Kentucky Horse Park opened to the public with 170,000 spectators gathered over the four-day championships, held that September in unseasonably hot weather.
“The exceptional conditions of that weekend in Kentucky are pretty well known and catered for now. Back then (although the Mexico Olympics was another case), it was a novelty and we certainly did not have ‘misting’ fans and air-conditioned stables. Nor were they going to shorten the course.
“The ethos back then was true to the origin of the sport,” John said, alluding to its cavalry origins.
“After all, it was conceived as a test to find officer material, not for bleating sheep? Without the internet in those days, I was an avid consumer of books, magazines and other peoples’ ideas.”
John abided by the sage advice of Sheila Wilcox, who “saved me most time when she wrote about warming up for dressage; that ‘if you can’t do it in 20 minutes, you aren’t going to do it at all.’
“Of the many books and ancient masters from whom I have and still do draw inspiration, including back to Xenophon (though not in the original Greek!), the most influential for me was Effective Horsemanship by Noel Jackson. It introduced me to interval training in the early 70s. I have always been determined that whatever else I did, my event horses would be fit. It certainly paid off in Lexington. I am also thankful that Sam managed to experience this through getting a couple of invaluable years at old long format eventing and especially the steeplechase phase.
“It is one of my joys, if we have a rare moment of reflection together, to hear where he is advancing with his theories now,” he remarked. Sam too won a silver medal on American turf at the 2018 World Equestrian Games at Tryon on Ardagh Highlight, 40 years on from John’s achievement.
Wept
John’s cross-country tactics and safety theories are gleaned from his career at top level, particularly after Lexington, which as he recalled began normally enough.
“Although with a five-minute chase to include a bullfinch, it was always going to take no prisoners. Actually, two good course-building ‘Don’ts’ emerged by the end. A bullfinch causes horses to injure themselves if they try to go over the top at speed, so it must be presented so they can fairly read it and not trick them.
“Also, an angled rail into a drop, or water, causes horses to ‘leave legs’ as a means to gain themselves split-second opportunity to assess. The angle then works like a ploughshare, rotating horses laterally.
“In a parallel with Tryon’s second horse inspection [hit by Storm Florence], the first Lexington horse inspection suffered a tropical storm. We adjourned into the stables and temperatures then climbed.
“I was thrilled with Blue’s dressage... until I heard my score. For once I had no excuses. Out of options, I sneaked back to the stables and wept.”
Lying 36th out of 47 competitors at that stage, redemption followed on what US coach Jack Le Goff described as the biggest cross-course he had ever seen. The bogey fences proved to be the Fort Lexington stockade combination and Serpent water fence on the 7.4 kilometre (4.5 mile) course, which, in the long format era, followed the roads, tracks and steeplechase elements.
“Cross-country day reached ‘only’ 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahreinheit) but the problem turned out to be the breezeless humidity left from that tropical storm, steaming up from the turf.
“Unlike Tryon, there was no shortening of the course or avoiding a hill. There was already an element of mayhem when it came to my turn but I didn’t really know, as there was no rider CCTV and no army of supporters bringing news. I was not helped by a hold in the D Box, which gradually stretched to over 20 minutes. We didn’t have practice fences in those days. I had to guess how to keep a horse ‘warmed up’ for an extended period when conditions were hot already.
“Blue felt almost ‘drunk’ over the first three fences, which was something I had never experienced before. My ‘Lady Hugh tips’ [about using landmarks to line up tricky angles] went out the window at fence five, Fort Lexington, where I was one of several to get my line wrong and pick up 20 penalties.”
He was not the only one as an engrossing YouTube find was several videos of the 1978 world championships, narrated by its eventual gold medal champion Bruce Davidson who won on another former racehorse Might Tango. Including of its time scenes of riders being legged back up after falls, it shows the notorious attrition rate when 20 penalties ranked amongst the best scores after cross-country day.
“It’s a long way to go at that stage, with over 30 more efforts to come. I suppose I thought I had not been sent across the Atlantic, with sole responsibility for Ireland’s honour, to wimp out. I was also lifted in that lots in the crowd seemed to support the ‘auld country’,” John said, continuing his vivid recollection.
“Hunting in Tipperary paid off and we survived, though only afterwards did I find the bits to enjoy. Still, despite a 20, to be sixth after cross-country was a bit of a let-off. Fortunately, in some ways, I was so surprised with my own good fortune that I never had a thought it might be my business, save to hope the horse would be okay, when there was a disturbance as a horse staggered into the barn, supported by four beefy crew. Another held a drip bottle and more helpers directed an oxygen tube up his nose. I had not a notion to pay any more attention.
“Blue’s fitness and phenomenal heart paid off. He was in better form than I was when we went into the jumping test with the mercury past 49 degrees and I in my green hunting coat. He excelled himself over the Derby-type track. A surely heatstruck American journalist even described him as ‘flawlessly clearing the stadium jumps with the grace that is usually frozen into statues.’
“And there you have the story of an event, which sometimes annoyingly seemed both to define me and haunt Sam, while he carved out his own path to become better than me. Now with a silver to add to his bronze, Cambridge Blue still had his gold medal to come.”
L-R: John Watson with his son Sam, EI Munster Chairman Marion Donegan , Hannah ‘Sparkles’ Watson and Julia Watson receiving their Special Recognition Award at the 2018 Munster Eventing Bal \ Tadhg Ryan
Right order
Dressage was his Achilles heel, however help was at hand in the form of German Olympian Rosemarie Springer.
“That autumn, Rosemarie appeared to my rescue. It actually wasn’t that I was doing much wrong, I was just not doing enough which was right – a version of Eric Morecombe ‘playing the right notes, not necessarily in the right order!’
“She noticed me at Lexington and without much difficulty, thought she could do something of a silk purse job on my routine pig’s ear in the dressage arena! She ordered her friends, the Ziegs from Wicklow, to organise a clinic. As only Rosemarie could, she instructed them that ‘I must zee zat boy.’”
The secret to Rosemarie’s success was “she insisted for the first 10 days I rode only her horses, while only she rode my horse. I later understood the importance of this, once I had qualified as a practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic programming. The principle is followed, or tried to be followed, when my daughter Zanna went to summer Gael Choláiste, where you can be expelled for speaking English at any stage 24/7! In those 10 days, it became how I expected a horse to feel. Same thing, vice-versa, for my horse expecting how to be ridden.
“Put back together, we understood each other. By chance, I did not have my other horses to work with the rest of the day, which would keep me ‘infected’ with my habitual ways. It worked. From being consistently in the bottom quartile in dressage, I don’t think afterwards I was ever out of the top one.
“Remarkable? No! For, as I used annoy my poor children and the occasional masochistic voluntary student, it was just knowing what was needed, through having someone take the trouble to explain. And then deciding to do it.
“How else can ‘foreigners’ (and increasingly I am delighted to say, some of our own riders now) take an enthusiastic, if somewhat proper spirited Irish horse and in a few short weeks move it from the bottom of the dressage ranks up to the top and win consistently? It ain’t magic or a trick, but it does take commitment.”
Bord na gCapall’s Tommy Ryan came up trumps again by arranging for a six-week spell as a guest of the famous Cadre Noir headquarters in Saumur. “That softened and lightened my style more kindly again. In Saumur, my abiding impression was Adjutant Jean-Marie Donard epitomising insouciance, as he executed caprioles while keeping intact the ash of the Gauloise between his lips.”
Going for gold
That elusive gold medal win happened the following year at the European championships in Luhmuehlen.
“Truly, you can’t beat gold and the team medal in 1979 shared with Helen Cantillon O’Keefe, David Foster and Alan Lillingston rates highest for me. If I hadn’t ‘done a Watson’ and missed entirely at the gate on the last day, Blue would even have had an individual bronze instead of just individual fifth. It is sad that Alan and David are no longer with us.
“I seem to have only one photo as we and chef d’equipe, Hugh McIllveen, stand soaking and bemused in yet another torrential eventing downpour, as they played a weird version of Amhrán na bhFiann. The only time I remember it being played for me and another case of perhaps the right notes but definitely not in the right order!
“Blue’s career fizzled out after that. I was sacked from the team in 1980 with all the hoo-ha over the Moscow “non-Olympics” and I refused to run on a hard Punchestown for selection. The wonderful ‘Doc’ Bob Griffin had told me Blue’s legs after 1979 really only had one long format run left in them.
“I pleaded and then rebelled when the selectors insisted I had to run full throttle at Punchestown if I wanted to be selected. Why use the bullet and how stupid to be sent with no ammunition left? Yet another Olympic setback.”
Even Cambridge Blue’s ‘one more run’ was not to be. “We went to Burghley instead and he tripped over a molehill (which we are so lucky not to have in Ireland) and was lame before the first trot-up.
“The following winter he inexplicably faded away. My observant local vet thought he might have fluke but that treatment did no good. I was too fond of the old boy to see him suffer so we took the decision which wets my eyes even now.
“The post-mortem showed he had a heart 25% larger than average and a liver substantially eroded by cysts. I’ve heard that cysts aren’t caused by fluke but could be dog worms. I quietly wonder whether it had anything to do with the ‘bute’ then permitted and de-rigeur in old long format and whether a sore liver was why I was forever calling in many versions of ‘horse physio’. If only horses could talk?”
Seoul-destroying
You can try to replace the horse of a lifetime. And even get to the Olympics with one.
“Burghley was a happy hunting ground for me as I was 14th on Mr Todd VI in the mid-1980s where he was best of our squad, despite having five rails down. He was left off the team because he was a nightmare when show jumping after cross-country, yet he was brilliant over the poles, jumping nine clears running at Grade C.
“He had stiff shoulders which later I found out might have been from copper deficiency. That horse’s moment of glory was when the other Mr Todd (now Sir Mark) rode him around the Aintree Grand National course for BBC TV.”
Another was the Carnival Night gelding Tullineaskey. “I had some fun in internationals with him. He was bought off Willie Santry as an unbroken three-year-old, intended to be for Julia. We had to lassoo him to bring him out of a bog onto the road to see his feet and straightness. The plastic bag tax has almost put an end to it but one of what someone once called ‘witches knickers’ blew under the horse’s nose.
“He whipped around as Willie water-skied down the road in a failing battle to keep contact, not helped by a frantic scream from Mrs Santry of ‘Hang on Willie!’ Willie endured as the horse’s stable name but the rest of the phrase, considering the potential of announcing him in Julia Watson’s ownership, was deferred in favour of the Santry’s address!
“Willie achieved for me at Seoul in 1988, my almost 20-year dream to get to the Olympics. He also allowed me claim on my CV that I had brought a horse from unbroken to Olympics. The moral I learned was to ensure you are clear in your goals,” John said wryly, as he recalled thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve done it!’ as he saluted at the start of his dressage test.
“The next day Willie thought to ‘bounce’ a parallel and I was in the ambulance with my collarbone in bits. It was a measure of Olympic fences that he almost got away with it, according to a photo I saw later.
“It was a silver birch oxer on the top of a hill. Strangely, there were six falls at it in the space of five horses (one fell twice!) and nothing before or after. I rationalise that the Far Eastern sun caused an effect for a short while on the birch bark, working like the camouflage of a zebra’s stripes in a heat shimmer. Neither Sam nor I have had much favour from the Olympics!
“Prattle was a gorgeous horse on whom I got third at Wylye. He was half-brother to Anaglog’s Daughter and George Ponsonby allowed me, on account of her success, eventually to try him at racing.
“Finer than Blue, though both were thoroughbred, it confirms my motto that for eventing, I look for thoroughbred blood with the substance of a half-bred and I run away from a half-bred that looks like a thoroughbred.”
Looking back on an eventful career, he regards his 1978 Badminton statuette as “probably my favourite prize of all. Partly, as is so true with eventing, you can have a great time and achieve much without actually being the winner!”
Watch the YouTube footage as Cambridge Blue, the bay with his distinctive star, strides out of the Lexington show jumping ring and you’ll see why John Watson is a winner as a horseman too.
Next week: Other ventures