Lamaze and Hickstead brought out the best in each other

Share

The competitive spirit is often the difference between the good and the great, and between the great and the legendary. The Canadian show-jumping horse Hickstead, who helped win a gold medal for Canada at the Beijing Olympics, showed this week why he deserves to be regarded among the world's legendary athletes. At a jumping competition in Verona, he finished a round in nearly flawless form, seconds before collapsing and dying of a massive heart attack. Hickstead competed until the very end, and gave everything he had to his sport and his rider.

No one knows ahead of time who is touched by that magic. Hickstead's rider, Eric Lamaze, was disqualified from not one but two Olympics because of his cocaine use and, if not for a humane and wise arbitrator, Ed Ratushny, would have been lost to Canada, to Hickstead and perhaps to himself. In Beijing he was Canada's only double medalist, winning a silver in the group competition to go with his individual gold.

Mr. Lamaze's story is of second and third chances. His mother was a drug addict, his father was unknown, and his schooling stopped at Grade 8. Fortuitously, he found himself on a farm at 13 and discovered that he was an equestrian at heart.

And he gave the Netherlands-bred Hickstead a second and a third chance, too. Hickstead was a hothead, proud and powerful. A handful. Perhaps even "unrideable." "They brought the horse out and he was completely crazy," Mr. Lamaze said of the second time he considered Hickstead for purchase.

A crazy horse, a troubled rider. Each brought out the best in the other. No obstacle was too high. They made money, too – lifetime winnings of $3.7-million. Hickstead, who was 16 when he died, became the world's top show-jumper, and the 43-year-old Mr. Lamaze the premier rider. In the end, even as his powerful legs buckled because of a ruptured aorta, Hickstead managed to protect Mr. Lamaze, setting him down gently. The video record of that moment appears to show the horse giving one last look at the rider before a horrifying, painful and very public death.

It takes time for the great to separate themselves from the good, and for the legendary to set themselves apart from the merely great. First, someone has to take a chance on them.