We’re sad there’s no Fair Hill Races this year, but here’s something to build you back up |
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They’re like building blocks, this family tradition of horses and racing – Meet National Steeplechase’s most recognized filmmaker Sam Slater (and the kinfolk that make Slater's name ubiquitous with the American jumps scene) |
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His family has touched pretty much every aspect of the horse world.
When former National Steeplechase Foundation president, retired National Steeplechase Association videographer and one-time Banks Race competitor at the Scarteen meet in Ireland Sam Slater (Tod Marks photo, left, with sister Joy Slater) unspooled his family horse racing legacy, it was quite a tale, spanning two centuries and two continents.
Slater is a past winner of one of Maryland horse racing's highest honors, and his family tree has been fruitful for generations. Sister Joy Slater won the AHSA Medal classic, was the first woman to win the Maryland Hunt Cup, and is, by many accounts, one of the nation's most well-rounded and highly accomplished stylists. Their mother, Jill Fanning was another standout, training the winners of most of the nation’s top races, including three Maryland Hunt Cups.
Grandparents Miles and Joy Valentine were among the best-known owner-breeders on the circuit for decades, and their pink-with-cerise-hearts silks were - and, today, continue to be - the most-recognized on racecourses on both sides of the Atlantic.
Even the ancestors get in on the game – Sam Slater’s namesake was America’s first industrial spy, another – Jessie Drew-Bear, is a turn-of-the-century artist whose work remains treasured due to her use of color and movement in her insightful paintings.
From the tiny village of Cahervillahow in County Tipperary to the racecourse at Maryland’s Fair Hill - eerily quiet this weekend, meet members of his clan to understand how it is that Sam Slater is ending up in his basement storage room for hours these days, digitizing thousands of yards of celluloid of American steeplechasing film.
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You need a starting point – National Steeplechase archivist Sam Slater |
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Sam Slater may not have ridden a Maryland Hunt Cup winner like his sister, nor saddled one like his mother, nor been owner-breeder of a long list of hurdle and timber stakes winners like his grandparents, yet Slater has been part of American steeplechasing's framework for more than 40 years. Behind the camera and in front of it, Slater played an integral role in legitimizing the game and bringing it to a new level of professionalism, both in the eyes of the participants and the eyes of the world. |
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“We used to see all sorts of Olympic riders there,” Slater recalls, people like Mike Plumb, Jimmy Wofford, Kevin Freeman and Bruce Davidson who would often gallop horses for Slater's mother, steeplechase trainer Jill Fanning. “In those days, they really recognized how racehorses taught you a sense of pace,” and many of the elite level eventers also rode races. Kevin Freeman won the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup in 1969 and New Jersey Hunt Cup in 1970 on Stutter Start for owner-trainer Jill Fanning.
Slater's father, Nelson Slater, was a traffic engineer, later Deputy Transportation Secretary for the state of New Jersey. "He was a non-horsey person," Sam Slater says, "but abided all the family horse activity while my parents were married."
His parents divorced in 1974; Nelson Slater moved to Connecticut and remarried. Jill moved to Pennsylvania and married horseman Phil Fanning.
Slater rode as a child but quit after a disastrous costume class incident involving an Eddie Arcaro costume and a retired racehorse. He didn’t really take it back up until he was 17. When he did, his motives weren’t altogether pure.
“I figured out it was a good way to meet girls,” he says. “I was right.”
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Slater studied at the Groton School in Massachusetts and the University of Pennsylvania. He took some film courses at the New School and New York University, having had a taste of documentary work as a teen.
“So, my mother and my sister were the serious riders in the family,” Slater traces how he ended up behind the camera rather than in front of it. “It was the days of super 8 film (video) cameras. It wasn’t like today with different cameras and positions around the course – it was just me and one hand-held camera.
“They said, ‘here, film this race.’ I got pretty good at it.”
After school, he embraced foxhunting, and rode a handful of point-to-points, including the Banks race at the Scarteen Point-to-Point in Ireland.
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In 1977-’78, Slater moved to England to work with David Balding’s Red Oak television production. A cousin of trainer Ian Balding (Mill Reef, winner of the 1971 Epsom Derby and the Arc), David Balding had lots of race film contracts, plus they worked on projects from the Royal Windsor carriage competition to producing a feature on the Wimbledon ball boys and more. Slater worked the Epsom and Irish derbies before returning to the U.S.
Back home, Slater conceived Hunt Cup Productions when Cancottage’s first owner in the U.S., Broderick Munro Wilson contracted Slater to document his quest to win the 1979 Maryland Hunt Cup.
“He was a real self-promoter,” Slater says of the English-born and -based owner-rider, “but he gets full credit for picking out Cancottage and recognizing him as a horse that would excel in American timber racing.”
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Munro Wilson rode Cancottage in the 1979 Maryland Hunt Cup, pictured here jumping fence 13. ©Douglas Lees |
The idea, Slater explains, was for him to produce a slick documentary – now using “modern” 16mm film – of Munro Wilson and Cancottage prepping for, and winning, the American classic.
They’d sell it to the BBC, Munro Wilson said. It would be an instant hit.
It didn’t happen quite that way.
Munro Wilson sent Cancottage to Jill Fanning to train, and Sam Slater began collecting footage. Munro Wilson and Cancottage finished second in the Elkridge Harford heavyweight timber in early April, third of three in the Grand National two weeks later. Munro Wilson fell when in contention at the 17th in the Maryland Hunt Cup the following week. Munro Wilson remounted, finishing hundreds of lengths behind winner Dosdi, but is credited as fifth.
Munro Wilson scrapped the film, but Slater liked being involved in the sport so important to his family for so many generations.
A year or two later, home video started coming in, Slater says, “with better film and smaller cameras,” so he could have cameras positioned around a racecourse, and they’d be more mobile, more dynamic.
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Lornie Forbes and her OTTB Story Time at the 1975 Ledyard Advanced Pan Am Trials. Photo courtesy of Sam Slater |
“Lornie’s career with horses has had a big influence on me, and I think on the family as a whole,” says Sam Slater.
An upper level event rider on her own right, Forbes had a family antecedent, who had an influence on her love of horses: her great aunt, Mrs. William Coxe Wright owned jump race horses trained by Morris Dixon in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Her mother, Lorna Forbes, foxhunted and was co-founder of the Delaware Valley Combined Training Association. At 19, Lornie Forbes was short-listed for the U.S. event team for the 1974 World Championships and was reserve for the 1978 World Championships, both times on different horses she made herself from scratch.
It was during a USET training session at Gladstone that Slater first met Forbes.
“Joy and Lornie attended training sessions during these times at ‘the team,’ as it was called, Joy for show jumping and Lornie for eventing,” Slater says. “My mother would sometimes invite the out-of-town riders from the training sessions for dinner, since we lived so nearby.
“Lornie was invited there for dinner one time, and she remembers that she was really looking forward to it because she was hoping to meet…Joy!
“I don’t think she even knew I existed.”
Forbes went on to a long, successful eventing career, competing in the U.S., England and France. She spent a season with Irish trainer Arthur Willie Moore, and galloped for Mikey Smithwick and flat trainer Dickie Small.
She still rides and hunts. Slater and Forbes are part of a Riverdee syndicate this season.
They split their time between Unionville, Pennsylvania and Aiken, South Carolina.
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1979 Elkridge-Harford Point to Point, left to right: Cancottage (Broderick Munro Wilson, up) - 2nd; Beech Prince (Jay Griswold, up) - 1st; Sam Son of a Gun (Charlie Fenwick, Jr., up) - 3rd. ©Douglas Lees
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In 1982, Steve Groat had seen his camera work and asked him to be the official videographer at the Fair Hill Races. Soon, Slater was covering most of the mid-Atlantic and northeast meets for NSA. He teamed with filmmaker Damon Sinclair when HCP took over all the NSA meets in 1990.
“It was fun work, but it was a ton of work,” Slater says, citing burnout and a renewed focus on his non-profit and foundation work when he stepped back from HCP in 2016 and handed the reins to Sinclair.
Slater served on 12 boards at one point – including terms as president of the National Steeplechase Foundation. He gave most of them up a few years later. Today he's focused on the painstaking work of digitizing the thousands of hours of archival steeplechase footage in his basement library. (TGSF is working with Slater on this project - we've posted a few archived videos on our Facebook page and we're looking to add more. If you'd like to donate to the cost of digitizing steeplechase history, please check our website)
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Sam Slater masterminded the Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation’s educational programs from domestic summer trips to international. His wife, Lornie Forbes, junior race series developer Regina Welsh and Slater designed their first trip to Ireland in 2014, and it was by all accounts a steeplechase dreamscape, with working visits to the busy yards of trainers Enda Bolger and Gordon Elliott, tours of Coolmore and Ballydoyle, and going racing at the Galway festival, including a course walk with champion rider Davy Russell. (Pictured, in 2019: TGSF Developing Rider Ireland Trip participants Skylar McKenna, Chloe Hannum, Virginia Korrell, and Elizabeth Scully with professional jockey Rachael Blackmore)
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“We don’t have any children,” Slater explains, “but we feel like we wanted to do something for the next generation in steeplechasing.” Forbes had ridden out for Irish trainer Arthur Willie Moore on the Curragh, and “really gained an appreciation for how different – and bigger, it was over there. Tommy Stack (Red Rum’s jockey) lives near our house there, and though he doesn’t ride any more, he gave the (kids on our trip) an equicizer lesson.
“They loved it.”
They stayed at Slater’s family’s Cahervillahow estate in the Golden Vale region of County Tipperary. “The intention of this trip was to introduce young amateur American jockeys to how other parts of the world train flat and jump race horses,” he says. “And here’s the best part – these kids are all actively involved in racing today. The program has really worked quite well.” (Pictured, above - 2019 Ireland trip participant Chloe Hannum riding out with Rachael Blackmore)
Here’s what some of the participants had to say about their experience:
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Mr. and Mrs. Slater were both so welcoming when we went to Ireland for the camp. His house was big and beautiful and had a huge garden. It was an amazing opportunity to go ride for such high profile trainers, I even got to school a set at Gordon Elliott’s and worked two sets at Willie Mullins'. |
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One of the coolest things that happened this year was a mare named Skyace won a grade 1 at Fairyhouse – she’s one of the ones I worked at Willie’s."
(Pictured - Skylar (right) riding at Gordon Elliott's in 2019)
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Sam and Lornie were extremely generous in sponsoring the trip and hosting us in their beautiful home. It was a wonderful learning experience that opened so many doors in the horse racing industry that probably would have been difficult to open on my own. |
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It’s not every day you get to work a set with Ruby Walsh (pictured) or chat with Rachael Blackmore in the weighing room!
They’re part owners of Include It, who I won a couple races on this season. That’s a fun way to bring things full circle.
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Sam and Lornie are definitely two of the nicest people I have ever met. They both make a point to say hello to me at the races, and I can never thank them enough for the amazing opportunity to get to go to Ireland and work and school for some of the biggest jump trainers over there. |
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I would never have (been able to make) the connections in Ireland and spend last winter there riding out for a top point-to-point yard and even get to ride a few races there without the Slaters’ support of the TGSF camp.
(Pictured - Virginia with trainer Jessica Harrington in 2019)
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TGSF is planning a July 2022 trip to Ireland - stay tuned for more details and keep an eye on our website for updates.
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Grandparents – Miles and Joy Valentine
(and the best-silks-ever)
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Miles and Joy Valentine were steeplechase owners, breeders, participants – leaders in the U.S., England and Ireland from their home near Unionville. Their horses raced in Valentine’s famed pink silks with red – more specifically, cerise – hearts.
“They always used them, here and in England and Ireland too,” grandson Sam Slater told Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred’s Joe Clancy. “I remember Richard Pitman (retired jockey and television racing analyst) saying when he wore them if he was riding a favorite that didn’t win, the punters would be blowing kisses at him sarcastically.”
The silks have been seen on American racecourses most recently for the Valentines' granddaughter Joy Slater’s Fat Chance Farm (silks are allowed to “pass through” to the next generation). Her Flaming Sword has been running at the timber stakes level.
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Flaming Sword, with McLane Hendriks wearing the Valentine silks, in the Open Timber race at the 2022 Warrenton Hunt Point to Point.
©Douglas Lees
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Hall of Fame trainer Burley Cocks and son Winky managed Valentine horses in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. They won the American Grand National four times – High Patches in 1969, Deux Coup in 1977, Tan Jay in 1979 and Down First in 1980. Cancottage won the Maryland Hunt Cup three times, including with granddaughter Joy Slater as the first woman to win the historic race. |
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Jacasaba was a standout Valentine handicapper in the 1970s, Chile-bred turf sprinter Jeff a multiple stakes winner and Gala Regatta was a graded stakes winner. Colonial Cup and Noel Laing winner in 1973, Lucky Boy III was another one brought from Chile. Irish-born Baronial, stakes winner Winter Wonderland and more carried the Valentine silks to the winner’s circle.
The Valentines inherited French-born Mystic II from an uncle, Mahlon Kline. A multiple stakes winner in France and the U.S., Mystic was a standout at stud: progeny included 1969 ‘chase earnings leader China Run, champions Life’s Illusion and Soothsayer and Maryland Hunt Cup winners Freeman’s Hill and Bewley’s Hill.
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1984 Maryland Hunt Cup - #10, Bewley's Hill (Dixon Stroud, up) jumping alongside Sam Son of a Gun (Buzz Hannum, up). Bewley's Hill won that year. ©Douglas Lees |
Miles Valentine died in 1978; a race at Fair Hill was named in his honor.
Joy Valentine, who chaired the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association board, received the Ambrose Clark Award in 1982. She was an avid rider and foxhunter, always side-saddle according to grandson Sam Slater.
She died at age 96 in 2000, and the memorial race now runs in both their memories.
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Another son of Mystic II, Burley Cocks-homebred Babamist was out of the Blenheim line mare Babadana.
Babamist performed well on the track, winning four on the flat and four over hurdles (Skip Brittle up.) After retiring early due to a racing injury, Joy Valentine sent the chrome-splashed chestnut to Frank Chapot to train and show as a jumper. Upper level event rider Mary Hazzard took an interest in the young horse, hunting him with the Cheshire, eventing him at the upper levels (Fair Hill, Radnor, Chesterland), standing him at stud and even using him as a quiet guest horse. Even as an entire horse, Babamist went in a rubber snaffle and was always a gentleman, Hazzard told writer Kate Samuels in a 2013 article in Eventing Nation.
Babamist was influential as a sire: he fathered upper level eventers Heyday (Pan Am gold, Olympic silver, World Championships bronze), Good Force, Mystic Mike, Mystic Milo, My Turn, Snowy River, Mystic High, Little Tricky and a host of others, eventers, show horses and ‘chasers.
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Sam Slater remembers his grandmother (pictured, riding sidesaddle with the Andrews Bridge Hounds) being a typical grandma, loving and kind, “but she was never afraid to speak her mind.”
Sometimes she did it under her breath. Slater recalls a particular day when she was watching Zaccio win, again.
In 1977, trainer Burley Cocks bought Zaccio for $25,000 at Fasig-Tipton Saratoga as a yearling for the Valentines, but he was among horses sold in a 1979 dispersal after Miles Valentine died. He sold to other Cocks clients, Bunny and Lewis Murdock.
Zaccio was rounding the final bend in a grade 1 hurdle stake one day. “It was obvious he was going to win,” yet again, Slater says. “My grandmother said it quietly, but she said it. ‘Damn it.’ ”
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Ancestor – Samuel Slater, industrial spy |
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Samuel Slater, 1768-1835, may be American steeplechasing’s Joy and Sam Slater’s great-x3 grandfather – and Sam’s namesake, but to industrial development in the then-youthful United States, he's a lot more than that.
Slater was born in Derbyshire, England, fifth son in a typically large farming family. At age 10, he went to work at a cotton mill using then-modern water frame machinery.
Slater heard there was huge interest in the new United States to develop similar machines, but he also knew there was a British law against exporting machine designs. He recognized the unique opportunity to ply his knowledge, memorizing as much as he could and departing for New York in 1789.
He later became known as “Slater the Traitor” in his home village for the information he fed to a Rhode Island mill owner to modernize his Pawtucket factory. The result, in 1793, was the first successful water-powered roller spinning textile mill in America.
In 1812, Slater built the Old Green Mill in Webster, Massachusetts, employing what became known as the Rhode Island System of factory practices based upon family life patterns and a big child labor force in New England.
In 1791, Slater married Hannah Wilkinson; she invented two-ply thread, in 1793 becoming the first American woman to be granted a patent.
In 1799, he was joined by brother John Slater from England, a wheelwright, and they expanded operations into Connecticut and expanded production to include iron for machinery construction.
Slater died in 1835.
Slater's original mill still stands, known today as Slater Mill and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is operated as a museum dedicated to preserving Samuel Slater's history and contributions to American industry. Slater's original mill in Pawtucket and the town of Slatersville are both parts of the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park, created to preserve and interpret the history of the industrial development of the region.
His papers are held at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library.
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Great-grandmother – Jessie Drew-Bear, self-taught artist |
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Jessie Drew-Bear was born in England in 1877. A young mother and divorcee, she immigrated with her young daughter, Joy (future Joy Valentine) to the U.S. in 1905.
A woman well before her time, she started her own business; the Philadelphia Flower Shop operated on Chestnut Street more than 40 years.
At age 59, in 1938 Drew-Bear received a simple, beginner paint set from Joy for Christmas. It sparked a remarkable career. She trained with Philadelphia artist Arthur B. Carles, later, briefly, working with French artist Fernand Leger, but Drew-Bear was largely self-taught.
Her art imitated her colorful life and surpassed the confines of any genre: Drew-Bear was frequently inspired by literature, theater, firework displays, social events and visits to Venice, Italy. She traveled extensively in Europe, Central America and South America and would often rent an apartment for months at a time.
Drew-Bear was known for embracing new experiences – in her 70s in the late 1950s, she learned to scuba dive so she could paint marine life.
She died in 1962, and her works are still often shown at area galleries. The ground-breaking careers following the tail-female line are no surprise given Drew-Bear's pre-feminist movement business acumen.
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Ancestor – Mahlon Kline sort of started the story |
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Miles Valentine’s uncle Mahlon Kline (1846-1909) owned both flat and jump race horses in the U.S. and Ireland in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Vincent O’Brien trained for him in Ireland.
A bachelor with no children who became one of the nation’s most influential pharmaceutical producers, Kline left his entire stable to Miles Valentine when he died in 1909. It started the family’s long connection with Ireland and racing, both here and there.
Kline was born in Windsor, Pennsylvania. He studied at Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie.
In 1865, he went to work for the Smith and Shoemaker pharmaceutical company. In 1875, the business became Smith Kline and Co., under Kline's leadership becoming the third-largest pharmaceutical business in the U.S.
He was also active in state politics, in 1905 made treasurer of Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Party.
He died in 1909.
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The pool is 22 feet wide and 11 feet deep, with a life raft to accommodate a resting horse head and four horse legs and a lift and rail system to take a horse from the surgical table, into the raft and into the pool, then out of the pool into a recovery stall.
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Mother – Jill Fanning built on the family legacy |
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Joy Valentine’s daughter from her first marriage to Burnet Landreth Jr., Joy Landreth Fanning has always been known as Jill. (Douglas Lees photo)
Born in 1927, she’s credited for sparking an interest in riding in her parents when she started riding and foxhunting in her youth, and, later, in her two children, Sam and Joy.
Fanning eventually became joint-master and field master for the Essex Foxhounds in New Jersey, positions she held more than two decades in the ‘50s,’60s and ‘70s. She hunted regularly in the U.S. and Ireland until just a few years before she died.
She rode in ladies point-to-points in the ‘50s and ‘60s and trained many top timber horses. One of her best was homebred Freeman’s Hill, who like another homebred, Bewley’s Hill, won the Maryland Hunt Cup.
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She owned Trapper John, who won the Stayers’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 1990.
But Fanning’s best-known training coup came in 1980 – with an encore in 1981, when she trained her mother’s Cancottage to win the Maryland Hunt Cup with her daughter Joy Slater aboard. Joy Slater was the first woman to win the race in 1980, winning again with Cancottage, in 1981. She would have been in the irons in the 1983 Hunt Cup, but Joy Slater took a hard fall in the Grand National the week before. Charlie Fenwick got the ride on Cancottage, winning a third Hunt Cup and taking permanent possession of the challenge trophy for Joy Valentine. Joy Slater was back in the tack for Cancottage’s 1984 New Jersey Hunt Cup and Pennsylvania Hunt Cup wins.
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1981 Maryland Hunt Cup presentation left to right: Mrs. Miles Valentine "Joy" owner of Cancottage; Joy Slater, rider; Mrs. P.F.N. Fanning "Jill" trainer of Cancottage. ©Douglas Lees |
Jill Fanning hunted Cancottage when he retired after the 1985 Hunt Cup (third), riding him through the 1998 hunt season. He was put down in 1999 at age 29.
Married to Philip Fanning for 27 years, Jill Fanning died March 23, 2003.
Philip Ford Nieukirk Fanning earned a Purple Heart in World War II, attending Princeton when he returned home. A longtime member of the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association, Fanning’s Ivy Dell Stud produced champion Great Hunter and homebred half-sisters, Gold Glove and Oh My Pride that won Maryland Million races.
Phil Fanning rode Polly Denckla’s Ned’s Flying to win the 1958 Maryland Hunt Cup. (Ned’s Flying won in 1957 under Gene Weymouth.) He died in 2016.
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Evening Mail –
fast, scopey and very versatile
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Though she didn’t have him in the barn when he was eventing, Jill Fanning still gets credit for training the only horse to ever get around the Badminton and Burghley three-day event courses and the Maryland Hunt Cup.
Evening Mail, owned and ridden by U.S. Equestrian Federation official Sally Ike, started his career as an eventer, jumping around England’s Badminton and Burghley. But when Ike began working for Jill Fanning, she was encouraged to try steeplechasing with the gray jumping specialist.
Ike first rode Evening Mail herself, winning ladies timber races at Essex, Radnor and Brandywine point-to-points. Olympic show jumper Frank Chapot took the ride for his 1973 campaign – they finished second in the secondary race at the Grand National then finished third in Morning Mac’s Maryland Hunt Cup a week later.
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Evening Mail (the grey) and Frank Chapot over the 3rd fence in the 1973 Maryland Hunt Cup. ©Douglas Lees |
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Lucky? Unlucky? (But he was sure fast) |
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Joy Valentine’s Irish-born Cahervillahow (pronounced “car- villa-how” – named for the Valentine’s home in Tipperary, Ireland) won eight races over eight seasons racing in Ireland and England, including six graded races over hurdles and ‘chase fences.
He was trained by Mouse Morris, chiefly ridden by Charlie Swan.
In 1991, he finished second at the Cheltenham festival, two weeks later he was beaten a short head in a thriller for the Irish Grand National. Three weeks after that, he was disqualified after battling up the Sandown hill to past the post first in the Whitbread Gold Cup (pictured, above).
Appeals were rejected despite overwhelming commentary and public opinion in his favor.
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In 1993, the talented bay son of Deep Run finished second in the English Grand National. That was the year the race was marred by two false starts, a group of 30 (of 39 that went to post) that ignored officials trying to stop them and an ultimate voiding of the result.
Cahervillahow hit the board in the Hennessy at Newbury in 1990 and ‘93, the 1993 Whitbread, the Melling Chase at Aintree in 1990, Thyestes at Gowran Park in 1991 and the Ericsson at Leopardstown in 1992.
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Sister – Steeplechase trendsetter Joy Slater |
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Joy Slater didn’t consider it a competition, but she definitely rivaled her mother and grandmother as the most accomplished distaffer in the family. (Douglas Lees photo)
Early in her riding career, Joy Slater showed on the circuit, including pony show jumping in Ireland. At age 18, in 1971 she won the American Horse Shows Association Medal finals.
She started racing in 1970, beginning in point-to-points and shifting to sanctioned races as opportunities continued to open for female riders.
Slater was the first woman to win a sanctioned timber race, Moe Greene at Fair Hill in 1976, and then became the first woman to win the Maryland Hunt Cup – Cancottage in 1980.
She rode extensively in the U.S., Ireland and England and remains the only American woman to ride in the English Grand National – a faller at Bechers Brook with King Spruce in 1983.
Slater’s race career ended in 1987; today she shows and hunts and serves on the Devon Horse Show Foundation board.
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When digging around her attic last year, Joy Slater found the original sketch of the 1931 Maryland Hunt Cup course map.
In a fundraising effort spearheaded by Bill Pearce, it was professionally reproduced and printed on archival paper, 20 by 10 ½ inches.
The limited edition was sold as numbered prints – 60, earning more than $5,000 to benefit the Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation.
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‘Under My Thumb’ opened the show, with the American jump racing contingent right there, front and center |
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Contributed by Steve Price, who co-wrote “Riding’s a Joy” in 1982 with Joy Slater |
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One summer morning in 1981 came an early-morning phone call at our New York City apartment.
My wife Anne answered, then put her hand over the receiver and whispered incredulously, “It’s someone who says she’s Jackie Onassis.”
Indeed it was.
Mrs. Onassis identified herself as an editor at Doubleday, which was common knowledge. She began by asking whether the name Joy Slater rang a bell.
Indeed it did.
Anne and I had been in Baltimore on a late April weekend in 1980 for the World Cup show jumping finals. That Saturday evening we learned that Joy Slater had become the first female rider to win the Maryland Hunt Cup.
We knew Joy Slater from horse showing. As a teen, she’d won the prestigious American Horse Shows Association (today U.S. Equestrian Federation) hunt seat Medal equitation championship. She was trained by Olympic show jumping veteran (and some-time steeplechaser) Frank Chapot.
Mrs. Onassis went on to explain that she knew the Slater family from the days when she’d hunted with the Essex in New Jersey.
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Jackie Onassis following the Piedmont Foxhounds during the 1991 Hound Match (Midland Foxhounds vs. Piedmont Foxhounds), jumping onto the Ayrshire farm driveway near the Upperville village during the hunt.
©Douglas Lees
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When she learned of Joy’s Hunt Cup win, she called her up, telling her, “Yours is the American National Velvet story. Won’t you write a book?”
Joy said she knew nothing about writing, but she was reassured the publisher would provide a collaborator. Jackie Onassis had, apparently, asked around, and Doubleday’s horse books editor had, apparently, suggested me.
Joy came from the horsiest possible environment. Her mother, Jill Fanning, trained steeplechase horses, and her mother, Mrs. Miles – Joy – Valentine was an owner-breeder of racehorses in the U.S. and Ireland.
Mrs. Valentine foxhunted sidesaddle and rode well into her 90s. She owned Cancottage, Joy Slater’s Maryland Hunt Cup winner.
Joy Slater’s stepfather, Philip Fanning, won the Maryland Hunt Cup in 1958.
I invited Joy and her brother Sam come up to Manhattan for a meeting at Doubleday. Sam, a filmmaker, told us he had extensive video of Joy’s race.
My task was a canter in the park. The race had generated no lack of newspaper and magazine coverage, and the Slaters maintained a scrapbook of all their equestrian exploits. Sam was especially helpful in organizing all the material.
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1980 Maryland Hunt Cup Paddock--Mrs. Miles Valentine, Mrs. P.F.N. Fanning and Joy Slater about to win on Cancottage.
©Douglas Lees
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Knocking out a draft of the manuscript took me only a few weeks. The manuscript focused, of course, on the Hunt Cup, from Joy and Cancottage’s arriving at the course on race day, to the race itself, described – by Joy – in stride-by-stride and fence-by-fence detail.
All that was left was to refine the draft into a book, which Joy and I did over a few days in Unionville.
I remember going down there, with Anne, staying in one of the guest rooms of Mrs. Valentine’s baronial house. There were Munnings paintings on the walls and Dick Francis mysteries on the night table.
“Riding’s A Joy” – the title comes from the Robert Browning poem – was itself a tribute to Joy’s accomplishment and Jackie Onassis’s editorial skills. In addition to many photos, our editor arranged for a map of the course to be end-papers (the illustrations on the inside covers), a rarity in contemporary book production. |
Reviewers had nothing but praise, and the book enjoyed respectable sales.
My next trip to Unionville was in September, 1981, to cover the Chesterland three-day event for a magazine I edited. Sam Slater hosted me. Upon arrival, he had a question: would I prefer to watch the dressage the next day or would I prefer to see the Rolling Stones in concert?
Therein lay a tale on it’s own: Sam and Joy’s grandmother, Mrs. Valentine has recently taken a trip to London to visit relatives. A cousin, a charted accountant, had mentioned to Mrs. Valentine that he had a new client, a rock band named, as Mrs. Valentine had reported to the Slaters, the Rolling Rocks.
It was a perfectly natural mistake for someone who knew only of the Rolling Rock Hunt, and the Rolling Rock Races, not the Rolling Stones rock band.
“Might that be the Rolling Stones, Granny?” Sam had asked her.
Mrs. Valentine allowed that it might be.
They asked if the cousin could arrange a few tickets.
A few days later, a package with a dozen tickets and backstage passes arrived.
“Now,” Sam asked me again, “What’ll it be?”
I weighed the issue — Mike Plumb or Mick Jagger?
The next day a caravan of cars left Unionville with Sam, Joy, eight friends and relatives, me … and Mrs. Valentine. “I should like to see what all the fuss is about,” she had announced.
The media were out in full force that afternoon for the Stones’ opening show. An ABC news film crew spotted Mrs. Valentine, by far the audience’s most senior member.
“And what do you like best about the group,” they thrust a microphone in her face. “I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied, frostily. “I’ve never heard them.”
Once inside the stadium, Mrs. Valentine recoiled at the sound-check. “I don’t think I’m going to like this music at all.” We assured her this afternoon would improve once “testing 1-2-3” and sound-level-test guitar power-chords were finished.
The opening act was George Thorogood whose high-energy boogie-blues had the joint rocking – they opened with “Who Do You Love.”
Mrs. Valentine wasn’t impressed. She turned to her granddaughter. “Would you ask them to lower the volume?”
Joy patiently explained the impossibility.
The main act went over better, with Mrs. Valentine fascinated by Mick Jagger’s energy. Backstage later, Keith Richards or perhaps Charlie Watts grinned and waved to Mrs. Valentine as we wandered. She acknowledged the greeting with a smile and gesture worthy of Downton Abbey’s Countess of Grantham.
For what it's worth, Bruce Davidson went on to win the Chesterland advanced division that weekend with JJ Babu, but, to be honest, nothing about his performance came close to that exchange at JFK.
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See if you can spy Sam Slater, Joy Slater, Joy Valentine and writer Steve Price in the mosh pit at Philly's JFK stadium. |
The Rolling Stones' American Tour 1981 was promoting their album, Tattoo You.
They opened with “Under My Thumb” and kept up the energy to their first encore, “Street Fighting Man,” the second encore, “Satisfaction,” and their final encore, the Jimi Hendrix-Woodstock version of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Sam Slater recalls the afternoon.
“I remember looking at (lead guitarist) Keith Richards and saying to myself ‘I don’t this guy is going to even make it through this tour,’ ” Slater says, acknowledging that, 40 years later, Richards is still going strong.
It was the largest grossing tour of 1981 with $50 million in ticket sales. Some 2 million attended the concerts – see if you can pick out the American steeplechase contingent in the crowd at the opening show, Sept. 25 at Philly’s JFK stadium: https://youtu.be/knTa_G_E1tk. |
Joy Valentine could not help but notice Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger's 'energy', writer Steve Price recalls. |
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I SAID—Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seem'd meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be—
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave,—I claim
Only a memory of the same,
—And this beside, if you will not blame;
Your leave for one more last ride with me.
My mistress bent that brow of hers,
Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
When pity would be softening through,
Fix'd me a breathing-while or two
With life or death in the balance: right!
The blood replenish'd me again;
My last thought was at least not vain:
I and my mistress, side by side
Shall be together, breathe and ride,
So, one day more am I deified.
Who knows but the world may end to-night?
Hush! if you saw some western cloud
All billowy-bosom'd, over-bow'd
By many benedictions—sun's
And moon's and evening-star's at once—
And so, you, looking and loving best,
Conscious grew, your passion drew
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—
Thus leant she and linger'd—joy and fear!
Thus lay she a moment on my breast.
Then we began to ride. My soul
Smooth'd itself out, a long-cramp'd scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
What need to strive with a life awry?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!
Where had I been now if the worst befell?
And here we are riding, she and I.
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
We rode; it seem'd my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,
As the world rush'd by on either side.
I thought,—All labour, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped she would love me; here we ride.
What hand and brain went ever pair'd?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?
We ride and I see her bosom heave.
There 's many a crown for who can reach.
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
A soldier's doing! what atones?
They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
My riding is better, by their leave.
What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you express'd
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what 's best for men?
Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turn'd a rhyme?
Sing, riding 's a joy! For me, I ride.
And you, great sculptor—so, you gave
A score of years to Art, her slave,
And that 's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!
You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
What, man of music, you grown gray
With notes and nothing else to say,
Is this your sole praise from a friend,
'Greatly his opera's strains intend,
But in music we know how fashions end!'
I gave my youth: but we ride, in fine.
Who knows what 's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being—had I sign'd the bond—
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test!
I sink back shuddering from the quest.
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
And yet—she has not spoke so long!
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life's best, with our eyes upturn'd
Whither life's flower is first discern'd,
We, fix'd so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,—
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?
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Joy Slater and Cancottage winning the Maryland Hunt Cup. ©Douglas Lees |
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