Читать книгу Riding for the Team - United States Equestrian Team Foundation - Страница 18

Chris Kappler

From 20th Century Gold

to 21st Century Gold

Chris began riding in Illinois with his mother, Kay, and sister, Katie. He got his show career under way with Alex Jayne and continued his development with George Morris at Hunterdon, the legendary stable in Pittstown, New Jersey, which graduated many show ring stars. After earning top equitation results, including second in the ASPCA Maclay and USET Talent Search Finals, as well as third in the AHSA Medal Finals, he went on to national and international Grands Prix. Chris was named Midwest Rider of the Year in 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1991. In 1989, he received the USET’s Lionel Guerrand-Hermes Trophy, awarded to the young rider who “exemplifies outstanding sportsmanship and horsemanship.”

Chris is the winner of more than 100 Grands Prix, including the American Invitational and American Gold Cup, each three times. Internationally, he took team gold and individual silver with Royal Kaliber at the 2003 Pan American Games, and subsequently was named the U.S. Equestrian Federation’s Equestrian of the Year. In 2004, Chris and Royal won team gold and individual silver at the Olympic Games in Athens. His other top horses included Seven Wonder, Concorde, and VDL Oranta.

Since retiring from competition in 2009, Chris has focused on training horses and riders. He is a founder and former president of the North American Riders Group, and has served on the USEF board of directors. Chris also has been a selector for U.S. show jumping teams.

Royal Kaliber jumped beautifully in the team competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the culmination of his career. Chris Kappler developed the stallion who contributed to the U.S. silver medal. The United States later was upgraded to gold after the winning German team was dropped in the rankings following a positive drug test for one of its horses.

As a member of the U.S. gold medal show jumping team at the Athens Olympics in 2004, I was struck by the similarities between our squad and the previous U.S. team that won gold at the Olympics, 20 years earlier in Los Angeles. It was almost an identical parallel in terms of the composition of the team, with an identical result.

In 1984, each horse on the team was amazing: Touch of Class with Joe Fargis, who won individual gold; Abdullah, Conrad Homfeld’s individual silver medal ride; Calypso, the longtime mount of Melanie Smith, and Albany, ridden by Leslie Burr.

Then, if you advance two decades, you have four more superstar horses. Fein Cera was coming off an incredible 2002 World Equestrian Games, where Peter Wylde rode her to individual bronze. Then there was Sapphire with McLain Ward and Authentic, ridden by Beezie Madden. These two horses at the start of their stratospheric careers would go on to contribute to team gold again four years later in the Olympics held in Hong Kong, where Beezie also took the individual bronze.

My horse, Royal Kaliber, was in his absolute prime in 2003 and 2004. No horse at the time had won more in his career. Interestingly, I was the first person in 12 years to be subjectively selected, after complete objective selection had not always paid off.

When I was growing up, watching Conrad and Abdullah, I dreamed of doing what they had done. Then to duplicate Conrad’s 1984 results in Athens, home of the original Olympic Games, was, for me, a dream come true. Like Conrad, I won individual silver in a jump-off, even though, through a sad twist of fate, I did not finish my round after Royal got hurt in the process.

There was such a shift in the way America picked its equestrian teams after we went to objective selection following a 1990 lawsuit over who made the squad for the first World Equestrian Games. Between 1983 and 2004, there was a dramatic change. We had gone from Bert de Némethy, the longtime team coach, to Frank Chapot, who was team captain during his riding days. Bert handed over a team that was in a very good place, so in 1984, Frank was able to step in with a squad that could win all those medals over an innovative course designed by Bert. With that 1984 course, Bert set the style for tests that were much more technical and “careful,” with related distances playing a major role. It was the beginning of an evolution to a more technical and difficult style of riding and training you needed to succeed over the courses. He also used lighter materials than were customary during the past in his courses, which asked as much of the rider as it did of the horse.

In my second-to-last junior year, we were at the Traders’ Point Horse Show in Indianapolis, where we watched the fantastic win by the 1984 U.S. team on television. The whole thing was incredibly inspirational and made you want to be an Olympian. Later that year, George Morris was judging the AHSA Medal finals in Harrisburg and pinned this wet-behind-the-ears Midwest kid third. He told my mom that my style of riding was very much like Conrad’s.

That became my visual. Riders often find someone they identify with and tend to watch, whether it’s body shape, mentality, or riding style. With Conrad, I admired his body of work, what he was able to accomplish through his riding, his techniques, and his partnerships with his horses.

Frank was involved with restructuring over two decades to get the United States back on track where we duplicated our 1984 win in 2004, after some dramatic highs and lows; two Olympic silver medals in 1988 and 1996, but no Olympic team medals in 1992 and 2000, and no team medals at all in the World Equestrian Games from 1990 through 2002. The team underwent pretty tremendous turmoil with the 1990 lawsuit. So it was incredibly satisfying for Frank to be able to finish his time as coach with a gold medal 20 years later and hand the team off to the next coach, George Morris, in a position that allowed for a very structured format, including subjectivity.

I was traveling through Europe in 2000 when I tried Royal Kaliber as an eight-year-old in Henk Nooren’s small indoor arena in Holland. We had a fantastic trial, so I went back to America and talked to Kathy and Hal Kamine about him. We had been discussing getting a horse together, but this was the first one that got me excited enough to want to work with them. They were very gracious and bought the horse for me, with the plan to try to develop to the highest international level that we could. Although Royal was not an approved stallion, he had really great old Dutch bloodlines. He was by Ramiro out of a Voltaire mother.

That year and the next, I really started to develop him. The old Cincinnati Horse Show was very much like the American Invitational. They always had a fantastic crowd, lots of atmosphere, and a course designed by Richard Jeffery. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since Royal and I had jumped a Grand Prix together for the first time just the previous week. I decided to wing it in this big class, even though I knew it would be a stretch for him at the age of eight.

When he walked in the arena there, he grew six inches and was incredible when he jumped around. That night, he was double-clear and finished third. I had a special feeling about him from that day on.

When there was a big event, he always seemed to rise to the occasion. He immediately became an international success for me. We had our growing pains together a bit through the 2002 World Equestrian Games trials. We missed out on the WEG, but we had finishing to do and got that accomplished the rest of the year.

In 2003, I won the American Invitational, the AGA Championship, and Devon. I think Royal is the only horse who has done that in a single year. At the beginning of that season, Coach Frank came to me and asked about my plans for 2003, suggesting I should consider the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo. They were really important that year, because we needed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics based on our performance there. I realized I couldn’t be a chooser and had to be part of the process if the United States was to go to the Olympics.

But Frank was able to secure for me the privilege of being the first rider since 1990 selected on subjective results. That enabled me to go to Europe to get some more finishing done on the horse instead of being involved in the selection trials. We were double-clear in the Nations Cup at Aachen and fourth in the Grand Prix. That took us through to the Pan Am Games, where the team won gold and I took individual silver as we qualified for the Athens Olympics.

Chris Kappler stepped forward to lead the North American Riders Group as its founding president in an effort to improve show jumping in North America. Beezie Madden and McLain Ward looked on during the inaugural meeting of the program. The organization succeeded by critiquing and rating shows, which prompted them to improve.

In 2004, I came in fifth in the Invitational and Frank said I was good to go, that I had shown the necessary form and I was set to be on the Olympic team without going in the trials. That enabled me to focus on my plan to get the horse to peak performance in the right place at the right time. It also reassured the selectors about the ability to make a subjective pick for the team again.

Although the Olympics had been in the back of my mind since 1984, I was so focused on myself and my horse and our training that I tried not to think about it. Instead of realizing an entire life’s work was coming up to this one moment, I was obsessed with the riding, the training, and care of the horse, trying to keep focused on my process.

I knew there wasn’t anything they could show me at the Olympics that we hadn’t done already. I felt as prepared as we could possibly be. I loved Royal. He gave you everything every time you rode him. Whether you were just on the flat or doing a little school, he always gave you 100 percent. I owed it to him to give him my 100 percent in turn. He was just a special horse and a really close friend.

It was a moment in which tragedy and joy mingled, as Chris Kappler (right) earned the individual show jumping bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where Rodrigo Pessoa of Brazil took silver and Cian O’Connor of Ireland got the gold. Chris pulled up in the jump-off for silver against Rodrigo after his mount, Royal Kaliber, injured himself. Weeks later, the stallion had to be put down. Chris eventually moved up to the silver after Cian lost the gold because of a positive test for a prohibited substance on his horse, Waterford Crystal.

It was a great U.S. team in Athens, home of the first modern Olympics in 1896. I grew up in the Midwest with Beezie, McLain and I were close, and Peter Wylde was a top professional. It was strong and comforting all around, with four riders who knew their horses and had a good team behind them.

It was pretty hot in Athens that year, and because they could almost guarantee no rain, the competition was on grass instead of all-weather footing. The grass was not really 100 percent; a lot of people felt it wasn’t what it should be for an event like that, and an investigation undertaken post-Olympics for the FEI confirmed this after several horses sustained injuries on that ground.

The Nations Cup had both rounds on the same day at the 2004 Games. The team competition started at nine in the morning, and it was an extremely long day. We got there early to ride, feed, and walk the course. After the first round was finished, with the United States in second place, we had a long stretch until the second round began after dark.

The day got even longer when we were tied with Sweden for the silver medal after Germany won. The jump-off was judged on faults and time. We got a break when McLain figured out a shortcut to the last fence by jumping a rock. There was a certain risk to it—the horses might balk at something that wasn’t the kind of jump they were used to—but it was a risk we were willing to take because it was a tight jump-off.

McLain told me, “It’s just like the equitation, six strides to the rock and six strides to the oxer.” All my equitation days paid off right there. Beezie had put in a phenomenal effort in the second round, and she got paid back for her three previous clean rounds because she didn’t have to go in the jump-off since McLain, Peter, and I were clear and fast to earn silver, and the format involved the best three out of four scores.

After the awards ceremony and drug testing I didn’t get back to where I was staying until two in the morning. I had been up for nearly 24 hours! But there was an even longer wait before we got the team gold. In 2006, our team reassembled for a small ceremony in Florida as we were presented with the gold medal. A positive drug test for a banned substance from a German team member’s horse had demoted that nation to fourth and put us first, 18 months after the Athens Games ended.

The day of the individual medal competition in Athens was really big jumping. I had a rail in both rounds, while Rodrigo Pessoa of Brazil had two rails in the first round with Baloubet du Rouet and was clean in the second. We were tied for silver with 8 penalties after Cian O’Connor of Ireland clinched gold on Waterford Crystal.

In the jump-off, Rodrigo had the last fence down; he was fast, but not so fast. I knew exactly what I had to do. But turning to the double vertical combination, Royal took a funny step. I thought maybe he just slipped. But then he stumbled between the two elements of the double vertical. I don’t know how he left it up. I knew immediately on landing he was not right. I pulled up and jumped off.

Royal’s well-being was number one for me. I could tell he was injured and in a lot of pain. They got the horse ambulance in there and took him away. Meanwhile, I had to get through the medal ceremony and drug testing. By the time I got back to visit Royal, Tim Ober, the team vet, had him settled as well as he possibly could. It was terribly distressing to see him like that…my horse.

I can’t remember how soon the U.S. horses left for home, but we felt it wasn’t in Royal’s best interests to ship him right away. We wanted to get some stability so he could fly and get out of there. But there was a problem. He was so fit and used to moving that being idle put him into shutdown. He started to have enteritis; his colon became inflamed. We finally were able to get his situation stable enough to fly him to a clinic in Holland.

We flew over a team of vets put together by Dr. Ober, but his condition just kept deteriorating. We tried a surgery and that didn’t help. We lost him.

It was an incredibly sad day for me because that horse was a great friend. For a stallion, he was so kind and so enjoyable to be around and ride. In a lot of ways, he ruined it for the horses who came after him—he was impossible to live up to.

Ironically, a drug violation also changed the results of the individual medals, nearly a year after the Games ended. A tribunal stripped Cian of his gold medal in the wake of his mount testing positive for two banned substances. So Rodrigo moved up to gold, and I got the silver. But the decision, announced after Royal’s passing, was a hollow promotion for me. The framed medals and the dried laurel wreath I wore during the ceremonies in Athens pale in comparison to my time with Royal. I will always have this great memory of my horse, great photos, and a great painting of him. He was the horse who gave me what I wanted so much, and I thank him for it.