44 SIDELINES JULY 2012
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
e
Show Jumping
The End of a Brilliant Era:
McLain Ward Announces
the Retirement of Sapphire
A PhelpsSports.com Interview by Kenneth Kraus
T
he greatest show jumper in the history
of American
equestrian sports, the
legendary mare Sapphire, has
been offcially retired.
McLain Ward said that the much
anticipated run for a third Olympic
Games Gold medal, with his partner
of over a decade, was just not meant
to be and Sapphire will no longer be
competing in the show ring.
Ward,
just returning
to
competition himself following a
devastating knee injury this past
January in Florida, said it wasn’t
any one major thing, but rather
a number of little things that
forced the decision. “She had a
pretty signifcant injury last year.
We wanted to take more than
enough time to try and recuperate
her properly, respecting that fact
that she’s 17 years old,” Ward
explained. “We took over a year.
She looked great at the beginning
of the year. We started back with
a couple of classes in Palm Beach
and she felt phenomenal. Then I was
injured which set us back another four
months. Then, just like with any older
athlete, over the last four months there
was one little problem after another, nothing
major, no major trauma, but little things were
bothering her,” he said. “The time kept ticking and
we tried to address the problems and have her at 100
%, but we couldn’t get her there. I feel that with everything
she’s done for us, everything she’s done in her career, it’s just
not fair to ask her to go if she’s not 100 %, so we came to a point
where we had to make a decision.”
In the end, the decision, Ward said, although bittersweet,
became easier to make. “In a few months, we probably could
have gotten all of those issues calmed down, but our goal was to
make one more run at the Olympic Games. If that wasn’t going to
be possible, I wanted the horse to go out, being remembered at
her very best, the best she was.”
The best she was, places her at the very top of the list of all-
time great American show jumpers, and among the greatest show
jumpers the world has ever known.
Words like incredible, greatest, amazing and marvelous are
words that are sometimes handed out too frequently and too
cheaply in our sport. In Sapphire’s case, her remarkable record of
accomplishment in a decade-long career of excellence merits at
least those words and countless more. Her many frst-
class victories came on the some of the world’s
biggest stages.
With nearly three million dollars in prize
money won, Sapphire has very few equals.
Her stellar record includes two Olympic
Gold Medals, two World Equestrian
Games appearances, including being
part of the Silver Medal team at
Aachen in 2006, and six World Cup
Finals. She and Ward won the CN
Million Dollar International at the
Spruce Meadows Masters and
the Pfzer Million in Saugerties.
They teamed up together to win
the big money Grand Prix fnale
at WEF three times, the Grand
Prix of Devon twice and the FTI
Hampton Classic Grand Prix in
back to back years. In her two
greatest seasons, in 2009 and
2010, she won ffteen of the
twenty-six major classes she was
entered in. In 2010 alone, she
strung together wins in the FTI
Grand Prix at WEF, the Grand Prix
of La Baule, the Grand Prix of Rome,
the Pfzer Million, the FTI Hampton
Classic Grand Prix and the President’s
Cup in Washington.
“My favorite win was the Million Dollar
class at Spruce Meadows,” Ward related.
“We had already, at that point, had had a
phenomenal career, but we hadn’t won of the
major, major grand prix events of our sport. To
me, there’s three or four grand prix in the world that
are the majors of our sport. Aachen and Calgary are the
two real heavy hitters. Those are the two biggest grand prix in
the world, I think in anybody’s book,” he said. “In Calgary, it was
an incredible day. Hickstead in his prime, Sapphire in her prime.
Similar to when we went up against Shutterfy in Las Vegas, the
two horses were going as good as they possibly could go. We
were going head-to-head. And there isn’t that much between the
winner and the second place fnisher. It’s typically a hair on the
clock, but basically it’s the same performance,” Ward estimated.
“But on that day in Calgary, we went head to head against
Hickstead at his very best, on his very best day and we beat him.
To me, that was certainly a great, great win and was certainly my
most emotional victory.”
Ward knew from the very beginning that he had a very special
horse on his hands. How he got to own Sapphire is a special story
in and of itself. “It was an incredible story. The Leone brothers had
both tried the horse and for one reason or another were unable
Sapphire
Photo by Kenneth Kraus/
PhelpsSports.com