He came out of nowhere, rising above the carnage that was the 1978 World Championships. 

He was riding Sgt. Gilbert, a horse he had brought along himself, who showed his promise by jumping out over the stall door. Riding as an individual, he bested all but one of the 10 riders who rode for the U.S., finishing just out of the medals in fourth place. 

A few years later, when I had a horse worthy of going past the preliminary level, I became one of his working students. He recognized that I could get the job done but noticed I needed to not be a mechanic up there. He pushed me to ride with more feeling. And it worked. I got there, to intermediate, on the 15-hand, $350 Brumby I called an upper-level horse.

I saw him knocked down when his’ 78 World horse got taken out by a hock infection. “I am sorry Ralph,” said team coach Jack Le Goff, “that you won’t be able to join us at the Olympic selection trials.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” said Ralph.

“On what?” queried LeGoff, knowing what else Ralph had in his string.

“Jump Shot,” came the confident answer.

“That is not an Olympic horse!”

 “He doesn’t know that,” said a cocky Ralph, “And, I’m not going to be the one to tell him!”

I watched Jump Shot go through those selection trials. I HEARD him go over the fourth fence at Ships Quarters, a big ramp that he banked. I asked him if he was concerned.

“Hell no,” came the reply. “It always takes him a few fences to wake up. That noise you heard back at the trailers? Well, that woke him up.” 

True to form, Ralph made that team with the unassuming little Jump Shot. Unfortunately it was the year we boycotted the Olympics.

Then, in the late ‘90s, Ralph invited us to come to Ocala. We had a renaissance of our coach/rider relationship. I had a couple of the original Brumby’s offspring going advanced by this point and had been invited to the USEF winter training list. Aside from juggling a child and a business, now my favorite coach was just a 15-hour trailer ride away! 

Ralph helped me earn a couple of low ribbons at Rolex Kentucky in the three-star. Even through years without his coaching, I never went with another jumping coach, just kept using his words and his methods. Now I got coaching for as many weeks or months as I could sacrifice, leaving my home, family and business to play in Florida. 

Then I bred the horse of my lifetime, Test Run. Ralph saw me through training level wins to the four-star at Rolex Kentucky. Over 20 years of instruction had gone into this, and as I told my classy gray gelding, a.k.a. Merle, great grandson of that Brumby I rode there 20 years earlier, “You have to remember everything I ever taught you all at once today.” 

I was really reciting it for myself because that’s what Ralph was saying to me. Merle and I finished cross-country on Saturday only 2 seconds over the time. Ralph fell that weekend, breaking some ribs with an arm in a sling.  

As we stood at the in-gate on stadium day, I looked down at Ralph and said, “In my dreams, I jump a clean round and then leap into your waiting arms in celebration. But now, you’re all banged up, and I can’t do that.” Without hesitation, he replied, “Baby, you jump a clean round, you can hurt me!” 

Merle got hurt the next year, and sick the year after. In 2007, all was right for a comeback, and I was excited to take a much-needed lesson with Ralph again. 

Unbelievably, several little things went wrong, enough to add up to one catastrophic mistake, and Merle stepped on his bell boot and crumpled on his knees into the fence. It didn’t look bad. “Hey babe, you OK?” 

I paused, I knew what had happened, “No, I can’t feel anything.”

Three months later, Ralph crashed badly. I heard about it from my own hospital bed. It was nearly a year before I got home from all my rehab and I tried to contact him. True to form, he was still Ralph, my friend, my mentor.

I’m still learning from him as I watch him teach clinics, his words tumbling out like old friends, including the best Ralphism of all, “DON’T PANIC!” which is how he runs his life. 

Kim Meier has completed the CCI****s at Rolex Kentucky (10th) and Burghley on her third-generation homebred Test Run, has been awarded USDF bronze and silver medals on her homebred Chobalt, placed first or second riding her off-track Thoroughbred Copilot side-saddle over fences at Devon, Harrisburg, and Washington International, as well as making a living running riding programs, organizing USEA events, and breeding sport horses in both New Hampshire and Maryland. Her education was under the expertise of Denny Emerson, Donnan Sharp Jones and Ralph Hill. 

Kim is one of the winners of the Chronicle’s second writing contest. Read the other entries here.