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tired and I should swallow my pride and pull up, but I’m Irish. I had to keep going.
Eddie is still within my sight when he looks over his shoulder to check my progress. I can make out a victorious smirk on that rosy face — that is, until his mare stumbles in the soft going and he topples off in a most unflattering heap.
I pull up just long enough to see that he was in one piece and, once satisfied, ask my gelding to canter the final furlong to St. Leger, marked by the towering steeple.
Eddie shortly joins me in front of the stately stone church. Out of breath, we slide down from our mounts and sit exhausted and exalted in the peat roadway. Our horses cool down quickly in the evening air. We loose the cinches and lead them home, emptying the rest of Eddie’s flask en route, though not much is left following his earlier “dismount.”
Of all the grand days I’ve ever had foxhunting, this day when Sir Edmund Blake and I chased steeples has been by far the grandest.
I wonder if anyone else will believe our tall tale, or remember the day in weeks to come?
The preceding was a fictitious though historically and politically correct tale of the birth of the steeplechasing sport. Jennifer Burke is associate producer for ESPN’s Racing Across America The sport of steeplechasing was indeed “remembered” by many.
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