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Looking for a diamond where the pressure left its mark
Last night for my niece's all-but-sleepover with the twins, we watched National Velvet (1944), which none of them had encountered in years of riding lessons and generalized horse-madness. It was well-received, with questions about the exchange rates of century-old pre-decimal currency and universal indignation that Velvet couldn't have won riding as a female jockey in her own right, so I should remember to tell them about Rachael Blackmore. I am now being serenaded by three ten-year-olds who may not remember any of the lyrics beyond the title tongue-twister of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," but they are invested in saying it loud enough for sure.
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(I have an ongoing fondness for International Velvet which is more or less a sequel. Includes a shot of my riding instructor from my teens going over a cross-country fence having lost both his stirrups.)
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It makes me very happy.
(I have an ongoing fondness for International Velvet which is more or less a sequel. Includes a shot of my riding instructor from my teens going over a cross-country fence having lost both his stirrups.)
That's great! How was he involved in the production? I have never seen it.
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The film is three-day eventing, rather than horse racing, including a couple of big competitions. For one of the US competitions, they filmed some of the cross-country footage at Ledyard, which was at the time one of the big international competitions in the US (they still host smaller stuff, but haven't hosted this kind of big international field in some years.)
I went hunting for footage - the International Velvet footage is 1978, but I found a video of the Ledyard competition from 1977. It's cued here to my instructor (Tony) about to cross left to right, grey horse, he's wearing a white shirt. I'm pretty sure that's Cow, his international-level mare. (I never met Cow, I was 3 at this point and I didn't start riding with Tony until I was 12ish.)
Tony's parents (both of whom I knew, they lived down the street from him) met when his father was a POW in France (his mother was French), and his father stayed in the Army through his and his sister's childhood, and they learned to ride from a retired Prussian cavalry officer while his father was stationed in Germany. It led to some interesting amusements, especially once I started learning French.
Cross-country, for the non-horse-obsessed, is the part of the event where horse and rider go out over a long distance course, jumping fairly big jumps, often made out of things like tree logs and brush, with the course covering a mile to about two and a half miles. It's scored based on refusals and time to complete the course. That video has examples of the course and fences if you keep watching around that point. The riders get to walk the course - often multiple times - before riding it, but the horses haven't seen it.
(I haven't watched the whole thing in detail, but did skim through: there are a couple of falls though I think everyone bounced right up again. These days the sport has more protective gear beyond helmets.)
It's part of a longer competition with dressage (precision and accuracy of movement in a specific pattern of actions), steeplechase (stamina on the flat), and stadium or show jumping (dexterity and speed over fences you can knock down in an arena).
I have in fact ridden on the Ledyard course, but only at the Novice level, where the cross-country fences are 2'11" maximum height and the course is a little under a mile. Then there's Training, Preliminary, Intermediate, and then Advanced, which is the international level. Everything gets bigger, wider, and more technically complicated to tackle as you go up in levels.
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Who wouldn't?
(I actually imprinted on Mi Taylor, but I did want to jump over hedges.)
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I THOUGHT YOUR EARS MIGHT BE FULL OF DIN ALREADY
HEY WAS I RIGHT
HEY YOU CAN JUST PICTURE SOME SULLEN NOSTRILS
HEY
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TELL THOSE NOSTRILS I LOVE THEM.
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I read the book National Velvet long before I could understand it (the fairy-tale winning-the-race thread is entangled with all sorts of oddities and stark realities), but I've yet to see the movie. The absolutely beautiful young Elizabeth Taylor is nothing like Velvet Brown in the book, who looks like "Dante as a young girl."
What a delightful all-but-sleepover!
Nine
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I'm glad! There have been women who trained winners since the '80's, but she was the first jockey.
I read the book National Velvet long before I could understand it (the fairy-tale winning-the-race thread is entangled with all sorts of oddities and stark realities), but I've yet to see the movie.
I like the movie very much (I came to the book afterward. My grandparents' house had some kind of mid-century paperback which I believe by now has lost at least one of its covers. I meant to hunt it up last night to re-read before bed, but instead I wound up re-reading Eloise Jarvis McGraw's Sawdust in His Shoes (1950), which was in the room I was sleeping in). It was made at MGM, but it has odd corners, too. Anne Revere is responsible for some of them, but so is Elizabeth Taylor. It was my formative image of Mickey Rooney.
What a delightful all-but-sleepover!
I imagine one of these nights we will try for the full experience, but pizza and movie and ice cream and late-night collection by other parents worked very well. No one melted, adults included.
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Bwee :)
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*hugs*