Eighty-Dollar Champion : Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation

English

ISBN: 0345521080

EAN: 9780345521088

Category: Nature / Horses

Publisher: Random House Publishing Group

Release Date: 08/23/2011

Synopsis: November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was one of the most prestigious sporting events in the country. In the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition, hotheaded thoroughbreds piloted by seasoned professionals awaited their turn to take on the course of towering hurdles. Into the ring trotted the most unlikely of horses-a drab white former plow horse named Snowman-and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots-and their win was the stuff of legend. Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harrys modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. The even-tempered nag was wonderful with Harrys children and made a quiet lesson mount. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit-so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road. But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up back at Harrys barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping. Based on the insight and recollections of the Flying Dutchman himself, Elizabeth Letts tells the dramatic and powerful true story of this unlikely duos rise to stardom-from the de Layer familys farm in Harrys native Holland, through the horrors of the Nazi occupation, to his hope of a new life in America, where Harrys spirit and drive were matched by those of the plow horse he saved from the killer van. Their story captured the heart of Cold War-era America-a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. As Letts writes, The message is simple: never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.

Excerpt: Unknown Property Excerpt

Eighty-Dollar Champion : Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation

Illustrated: Yes

Format: Hardcover

Height: 1.08 inches

Width: 6.42 inches

Length: 9.53 inches

Weight: 22.05 oz

Pages: 352