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Equestrian
World Mourns Loss Of Legendary Equestrian "Cappy"
Smith
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Legendary
equestrian, Morton "Cappy" Smith of Newport, RI and
Middleburg, VA, passed away this morning, Wednesday, July 17,
2002.
Cappy
Smith was a 2000 recipient of the Pegasus Medal of Honor awarded
by USA Equestrian, and was inducted in to the Show Jumping Hall
of Fame in 1991, the National Show Hunter hall of Fame in 1998
and was an inductee of the Virginia Horse Show Association's Hall
of Fame in 1990. He was a Director of the Royal Winter Fair, Toronto,
CAN, and Master of the Orange County Hunt in Middleburg.
At
Madison Square Garden in New York, Smith dominated the National
Horse Show over a period of three decades. He first won the National
Horse Show jumper title with Bartender in 1938 and again in 1938,
and in 1939 was champion and reserve with Bartender and Intrepid.
Smith was the first post-war jumper champion at the National Horse
Show with Chamarro and he captured the National title for the
final time in 1954 aboard Clay Pidgeon for his fifth championship.
Among the champion hunters Smith trained were such horses as Skylark,
Ballela, Lord Britain, Guardsman and Jambol, who won both the
triple bar jumper class and the Conformation Hunter stake at the
National as a four-year-old. Additionally, Smith rode hunter champions,
Sinbad, Grey Pennant, My Bill, Sombrero and Bill Star. He won
the three-year-old-hunter championship of Virginia for five consecutive
years.
William
Steinkraus, the first rider to win an individual gold medal in
equestrian sports for the USA in the Olympic Games, and one of
the most influential competitors for the United States, said of
Smith, "When I was a kid, Cappy was my idol and I think in
the view of many people the best Hunter/Jumper rider in America.
In my teens, I was lucky enough to have a chance to ride with
him on a regular basis and what I learned, not only about horses
but about everything, was incalculable."
Smith,
acclaimed by his peers and riders today as the greatest horseman
of the 1930's, 40's and 50's, has been called the Horseman of
the Millennium.
Arrangements
are pending.
USA
Equestrian Inc., as the National Equestrian Federation of the
U.S., is the regulatory body for the Olympic and World Championship
sports of dressage, driving, endurance, eventing, reining, show
jumping, and vaulting, as well as 19 other breeds and disciplines
of equestrian competition. As
the country's largest multi-breed organization, the Federation
has over 80,000 members and recognizes more than 2,800 competitions
nationwide each year. It governs all aspects of competition, including
educating and licensing all judges, stewards, and technical delegates
who officiate at these shows.
VISION STATEMENT
The vision of USA Equestrian is to provide leadership for equestrian
sport in the United States of America, promoting the pursuit of
excellence from the grass roots to the Olympic Games, based on
a foundation of fair, safe competition and the welfare of its
horses, and embracing this vision, to be the best national equestrian
federation in the world.
www.equestrian.org
.
