Buddy Brown’s 1976 Montreal Olympic Games partner Sandsablaze has been elected to the Show Jumping Hall of Fame, and he will be inducted along with four-time Olympian Laura Kraut during a March 2 ceremony at the Wellington National Golf Club (Florida).

“Sandsablaze had a storybook career that was never meant to be and may be unequaled in show jumping history,” his nomination announcement read. “The chestnut Thoroughbred foaled in 1967 was meant to be a hunter and not a jumper. When he became a jumper, most thought of him as a back-up and not a first stringer, but with Brown he defied the odds and became one of the most dominant horses of the 1970s, going from the hunter and equitation ring to become a grand prix champion and a standout on U.S. teams in Nations Cups, two Pan American Games and the Olympics.” 

In honor of Sandsablaze, this Throwback Thursday we’re revisiting this Horse of a Lifetime story on the gelding and Brown, originally published in the Aug. 19, 2013, issue of the Chronicle.

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It’s been more than 30 years, but when Buddy Brown tells stories about his days on Sandsablaze, he’s not just remembering. He’s reliving.

Brown’s words pile up on each other as he describes the approach to an enormous oxer and Sandsablaze’s flight into air. Every detail springs to life—the crisp dew on the grass of a morning schooling session, the heart-stopping falls, and the murmurs of the crowd after a fumble at the ASPCA Maclay Finals.

Even today, the oddly conformed off-the-track Thoroughbred (Blazing Count—Sandy Atlas, Ladysman) continues to inspire Brown.

“I wake up some days and think about the drudgery of life and wonder, ‘Why am I still doing this?’ ” Brown said.

“But then I look at a picture of Sandsablaze and think, ‘You know what? He showed up every day and went to work.’ He’s there for me when I have days that I wonder, ‘Why do I do this?’ He reminds me why I started doing this and why this is what I want to do.”

Not Higher Than 3’6″

When Sandsablaze first came into Brown’s life in 1971, he certainly didn’t fit the bill of “future horse of a lifetime.”

He was a ewe-necked gelding on the smallish side and with a worrisome tendency to be clumsy.

Brown, then 16, was in Southern Pines, North Carolina, for the winter with a large junior hunter that was sour in the ring but good on the trails. A local rider had Sandsablaze and was concerned about his tendency to trip on the sandy trails. A quick trade benefited them both.

Sandsablaze, then 4, spent that summer showing in the junior hunters. “He had limited success; he wasn’t horrible at it, and he wasn’t great at it,” Brown said.

In fact, Joey Darby showed Sandsablaze in the first year green division a few times and told Bob Freels, Brown’s trainer, that the little chestnut shouldn’t jump above 3’6″ given his seeming lack of athletic ability.

In 1972, Brown decided he wanted to do jumpers. Freels, who was more comfortable at the hunter ring, sent him to George Morris. But there was a hitch; Morris insisted that Brown show in the equitation division, too, even though he had no interest in it.

“George asked what horse I could ride for the equitation, and I said, ‘I have this horse who’s going to be 5. I don’t know what he is other than he’s done the hunters a bit, but he’s not spooky, and he’s OK on the flat,’ ” said Brown.

With that, Sandsablaze earned the title of equitation horse.

While Morris went to Florida, Brown spent the winter attending local shows in New York with Sandsablaze and Big Line, a jumper he leased from Morris. Once Brown had won a few equitation classes on Sandsablaze, Morris told him to switch to the schooling jumpers so he could show in the Medal and Maclay classes at the summer shows.

One evening, Sandsablaze and Brown ended up showing over a 4′ course just because other riders had asked for bigger jumps. Michael Page spotted them and informed Morris that he’d seen Brown put in a nice round.

“I got a phone call from George: ‘Buddy, what’s this I hear about you jumping Sandsablaze four-foot?’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to, it just happened.’ He said, ‘Terrific, now you have two junior jumpers.’

“I said, ‘George, here’s my trail horse turned hunter who just spent a month doing the equitation, and now he’s my jumper? I guess you know what you’re doing, so alright, if you say so!’ ” Brown recalled.

The Flying Squirrel Move

Turning Sandsablaze into a jumper wasn’t smooth sailing. In March of ’72, Brown shipped Sandsablaze to Morris’ Hunterdon for lessons.

“It was muddy and rainy and horrible,” Brown said. “It was not Sandsablaze’s thing. It was like trying to run on ice.”

Brown had to learn to adjust his eye and pace from a flowing, forward ride to a gappy distance to a more jumper style of compression and finding the base of the jump. One particular line was the bane of his existence.

“[Legendary course designer] Pamela Carruthers had a trick that showed up very often on course,” he said. “It was a vertical and a short four strides of 56′ to an oxer-oxer combination with a 26′-foot distance. There were no safety cups at the time, and the rails were heavy.

“With my hunter eye, I’d find the slow, long one out of the corner to the vertical. Then it would be a slow four steps to the base of the first oxer, and then Sandsablaze would hurl his little body straight up to get away from the front rail and land slithering down the back rail. Then the next stride would be as big as he could make it, but we’d still be 10 feet away from the front rail of the next oxer. He and I would hurl ourselves into the air like a flying squirrel, with his legs sprawled out reaching for the back rail. A lot of times he didn’t get there. He and I would go tumbling into the dirt together.

But Sandsablaze kept getting up like Rocky and saying, ‘OK, let’s try again.’ ”

The junior jumper division at Devon (Pennsylvania) that spring showed all their weaknesses. The sand footing was deep and heavy, and Brown didn’t yet understand how to collect Sandsablaze to help him power out of the footing.

“We fell down a lot that week,” Brown said. “We must have fallen a minimum of four, maybe more, times at the horse show. But the little guy kept getting up and so did I. I hadn’t gotten hurt yet and neither had he. I was young. At that age, I didn’t know what I should worry about. Later in my career, I might not have kept getting up.”

Plenty of people warned Brown not to jump the horse so high. “People were worried about the horse and about me,” Brown said. “But I wanted to be on a team, and you had to be tough to be on a team. So, this was my training.

“I don’t ever remember him stopping. He never said ‘No,’ ” Brown added.

By the middle of the summer, “we were surviving and staying on our feet most of the time,” Brown said. When fall rolled around, Brown got out the pelham and the standing martingale, and Sandsablaze reverted to an equitation horse. They finished second in the AHSA Medal Finals and third in the ASPCA Maclay Finals in the fall of ’72.

Didn’t Trot

The following summer, Brown and Sandsablaze showed in the intermediate jumpers, but a fall while schooling a water jump resulted in a cut and bruise of Sandsablaze’s tendon sheath.

They gave Sandsablaze six weeks off, which meant their preparation for the equitation finals was cut short. Brown got the pelham and standing martingale out again.

And at the AHSA Medal Finals in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, they scored the win.

“Nancy Baroody and I had to swap horses. This is where Sandsablaze was great. Whenever we had to switch horses, he had such a deceivingly long stride that people didn’t expect. He left a stride out early in the course for her in a bending line. So, I won’t say I looked as pretty as Nancy riding that day, but between my riding and his help, we won,” Brown said.

Brown hoped to top off that victory with triumph in the ASPCA Maclay Finals, but a line he continues to re-ride in his mind got the best of them. Without stirrups, they had to jump an oxer out of the corner, and in the three-stride distance to the next vertical, trot. Brown legged Sandsablaze off the ground at the oxer to make sure he cleared it. And then he couldn’t get the trot.

“I put eight of the smallest little canter strides you ever saw in your life in that three-stride line,” he said. “I don’t remember a thing after that except that you could hear the crowd gasp and then start talking. I almost wanted to yell out, ‘I know, I didn’t trot!’ ”

That victory might have eluded him, but Brown was on to bigger and better things that summer, taking Sandsablaze to Gladstone, New Jersey, to train for six weeks with Bertalan de Némethy.

“Every day it was like college,” Brown said. “We got up as 6:30, we had flat lessons, and then we’d jump on another horse. In the afternoon, we’d clean tack and do barn chores. Not every day, but sometimes we’d have classroom lectures upstairs in the trophy room. Bert would sit us down and draw diagrams and explain what a true shoulder-in was and all of the mechanics.”

With de Némethy’s training Brown started to understand how to establish a true connection and get Sandsablaze collected and in a correct frame.

What It’s All About

In the summer of ’74, Brown and Sandsablaze traveled to Europe with a U.S. Equestrian Team young rider tour. Their first show was Wiesbaden, Germany.

“When Bert entered us in the grand prix, I said, ‘I’ve never done one,’ and he said, ‘Now’s the time, then,’ ” Brown said.

Sandsablaze and Brown jumped clean over two rounds of the biggest jumping they’d ever seen and qualified for the jump-off. “Back then they used to raise ’em up for the jump-off,” Brown said.

“The last jump was an oxer, and I’d never seen nor tried to jump one this big before. There were eight or nine white rails, and in the middle of it was a hedge that filled 4’6″ of it and was at least 4′ wide. When I rode in for the jump-off, it basically looked huge; Sandsablaze was 15.3½, and when I rode by it, it was waist-high on me.

“I thought, ‘Alright, Europe was fun. Sandsablaze, I love you to death, we’ve had some good times.’ ”

After landing from the jump before it, Brown was in a panic. “I looked up and thought, ‘Sit back.’ I was about to poop my pants, but in sitting back, I’m sure I lifted my hand, and I squeezed my legs as hard as I could. I probably looked like a little monkey riding a Greyhound—I started humping with my hips,” he said.

“My eyes were as big as saucers, and I’m sure his were, too. I was looking over the back rail of this jump thinking ‘There’s no way.’ Then all of a sudden, I felt him start tucking up underneath me,” Brown recalled. “I will remember this as long as I have a memory. He brought his wither and back up and brought his right lead up in front of him like I’d never felt before. This was what the training was all about—how to keep the outside hind under control.

“At that moment, all these things I’d heard from Bert somehow overrode any instincts I had from before,” he continued. “He rose up, and we jumped the jump. I think both of our eyes were closed when we took off. I held my breath over the top, and we landed and jumped it clean. And that moment, I learned what that felt like. Was I able to do it all the time? No, but I knew it was the coolest thing I’d ever felt in my life.”

Brown and Sandsablaze ended up with a ribbon in the class. Sandsablaze was just 7.

That European tour concluded at the Dublin Horse Show, where the grand prix was even more enormous to Brown’s eyes.

“I was wondering if I should scratch,” he recalled. “But Bert said he thought I was comfortable and confident. We went on the premise that I’d go in, and if I had a couple of rails down, I’d pull up.”

Not a rail fell, over the first round or the second. And in a jump-off against some of Europe’s seasoned veterans, Sandsablaze and Brown won.

“I was amazed at what that little horse and I did together,” Brown said. “That moment was what gave me the confidence to think, ‘OK, I can compete with these guys.’ And to think he wasn’t supposed to have been able to jump over 3’6″.”

Into The Water Jump

In 1975, Brown and Sandsablaze traveled to Mexico City for the Pan American Games. Brown earned individual silver on A Little Bit but chose Sandsablaze to ride in the team competition. When they cantered into the ring for the second round as the team anchors, the atmosphere was tense.

“The night before, they had a riot after the Mexicans lost in a soccer game. And the Mexican team was fighting for the gold medal with us. If I had 4 faults or less, we would win,” said Brown.

Knowing Sandsablaze wasn’t the best of water jumpers, Brown made a bold decision.

“I somehow thought, ‘I can’t risk having the last jump down.’ I wasn’t sure if I could get over the water. So, I aborted the plan to jump the water cleanly and said, ‘Screw it, let’s just jump the brush box, canter through the water, and make damn sure we get over the last jump clean.’ Because even if I had 4 faults, we’d win. I pulled it off, and as we were jumping the last jump, I knew we’d won the gold. I’m maybe a little bit cocky, so I pumped my fist in the air. The Mexican crowd did not take kindly to that gesture; they started booing and chanting ‘Mexico’ and stomping their feet,” Brown remembered.

The U.S. team had to be presented with their gold medals elsewhere, because the stadium had erupted.

The next year, Brown rode Sandsablaze at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games. Fresh sod had been laid down for footing, and rain had made it slick. “We were basically jumping on sliding carpet. Poor Sandsablaze struggled a lot. We ended up getting through the two rounds, and I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but he bowed a tendon,” Brown recalled.

The team placed fourth, and Sandsablaze needed a year off to heal.

The Magic Flying Carpet

When Sandsablaze got back into action in 1977, Brown started him slowly. In fact, Sandsablaze’s first class back was a hunter classic at Lake Placid (New York).

“He wasn’t really fit enough to do the big jumper classes, but that was a good old hunter classic out on the grand prix field with real 4’3″, 4’6″ jumps,” Brown said.

By this time, Brown had gotten the ride on Viscount from the U.S. Equestrian Team and planned to ride him at the fall indoor Nations Cups. Sandsablaze was booked to go along as a speed horse, but when Viscount came up lame, Sandsablaze stepped up to the plate again.

He and Brown put in clean round after clean round at the Washington International (District of Columbia), the National (New York) and the Royal Winter Fair (Toronto).

Sandsablaze spent much of 1978 out of the spotlight because he was getting older, and Brown had the ride not only on Viscount, but also on the famous Idle Dice at the end of his career. But by the summer of 1979, Viscount was injured again, and Idle Dice wasn’t in team contention. It was up to Sandsablaze to go to another

Pan American Games. He and Brown shipped off to Puerto Rico and brought home another team gold medal.

By August of ’79, Brown and Sandsablaze were back in New Jersey, jumping in the grand prix at the Branchville Horse Show. In the jump-off against Norman Dello Joio and Allegro for the win, Dello Joio had a rail, and Sandsablaze jumped clean. But after landing off the last jump, disaster struck.

“I went to kick him on through the timers, and Sandsablaze took a stride, and I heard a snap. I had never heard it before, but I knew what happened,” Brown said.

He jumped off. “Sandsablaze stood there with his leg in the air. He wore rundowns because of his tendon injury, but you could see he’d broken his leg under them,” Brown said.

As he told this, Brown’s voice faltered and broke. “Give me just a moment,” he said as he paused and collected himself.

Then he continued: “He stood there, the proudest horse I’ve ever seen. The vets came to him and confirmed that there was nothing we could do. He was calm and fine just standing there, and the spectators were all there, so we did the awards ceremony around him. He stood there with his ears up. The crowd left, and we put him down right there in the ring.”

Dr. Rost offered to bury him on their nearby farm. Sandsablaze’s front shoes were pulled off for Brown before he was loaded in the trailer.

“It was one of the few times that my parents weren’t there for a class, and I had to call them up and tell them this,” said Brown. “That was the toughest phone call I’ve ever had to make.

“He had a lot of heart, right to the end,” he added. “He was the best. He was a huge part of what I was able to learn and do. He was like my magic flying carpet.

“There were other horses that came into my life that were deemed ‘better,’ and he’d fill in for the last minute for them and show up for work and get the job done,” continued Brown. “I’ve for sure had horses with more ability. I’ve for sure had horses with a lot of other qualities. But I’ve never again had one with a heart like him.”

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This article originally appeared in the Aug. 19, 2013, issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.