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Cannonball, Anne Kursinski’s Olympic partner, was a little horse with a big jump and an even bigger buck. The athletic superstar, who thrilled the country with his high jumps and his championship ability, died in March at the ripe old age of 28.

Cannonball’s owner, Magnus Lindholm of Robin Hill Farm in Greenwich, Connecticut, said the gelding would be missed. “Animals that you live with become as close to you as human beings and you miss them probably as much when they pass away,” Magnus said, adding that Cannonball lived out his life in a happy state of retirement at Robin Hill.

Anne Kursinski, who rode Cannonball in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in which the United States team fnished in ffth place, was saddened to hear of his passing. Anne said she was truly thankful for her partnership with Cannonball, adding that the plain chestnut gelding came to her as a fve year old. “I thought then that he would be my next Olympic horse. He was an amazing athlete, like a little super ball. He had tremendous scope and was ultra careful. In today’s sport he would have been perfect,” Anne said. “Cannonball was like a pony in his character. He could buck after the jumps like a bronco, because he was mischievous and athletic. He was always testing me to pay attention! He was really fun to gallop and jump because he never wanted to touch a fence. We had a lot of great wins!” Magnus bought Cannonball when one of his grooms recommended Anne as a rider. “I ended up buying her a fve year old horse to ride. I picked Cannonball up in New York and took him to my stable frst and then after two weeks he went on to Anne for her to ride and train,” Magnus said.

Magnus said owning an Olympic horse was a dream

come true. “It is very exiting to have your own horse in the Olympic Games. Just to qualify to represent the United States in the Olympics is fantastic when you think about how many horses compete to be there. And Cannonball was my frst real top horse. The whole atmosphere is very exiting, especially when you have a stake in the game.”

While Cannonball will always be remembered for his Olympic debut, it was the scrappy gelding’s gutsy performance at the CHIO Grand Prix of Aachen a year earlier that Magnus said he will never forget. “There were more than 80 horses in the class and Cannonball was just eight years old and had never seen anything as scary as that course. There were hedges to jump over and a lake to ride right through and Anne rode him perfectly. Anne and Cannonball were the 27th pair to go and they went 10 seconds faster than everybody else and no one could catch them. We had to wait for more than 50 horses to jump after Cannonball and they all wanted to beat him. No horse was closer than one second behind him. That was a real nail biter,” Magnus said.

While a suspensory injury ultimately ended Cannonball’s career and sent him into retirement, Magnus said he had the great joy of showing the horse as an amateur rider. “I never won anything with him, but then I was an amateur riding a super pro! I will always remember that it was a pretty fantastic feeling when he jumped,” Magnus said. “Cannonball was very well behaved but with an enormous kick when he came over a jump which made any rider hesitate to ride him. He never got Anne off as far as I know, or me either for that matter. But I saw him buck off several people. He had a way of turning in the air when he bucked that made people fy off in the other direction.”

On the day that Cannonball died, fans focked to an online message board to talk about the horse. While his fans were thrilled that he was able to live happily in retirement for many years and commended Magnus on taking care of the horse until the end, several fans mentioned they remembered Cannonball’s great jump and even testifed to how thrilling it was to watch. One fan summed it up best, however, with the simply statement: R.I.P. Cannonball. It’s always hard to lose a friend.

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