Linda Blackford is an enterprise reporter who has been working on advance coverage of the 2010 World Equestrian Games. 
Alicia Wincze is a general assignment sportswriter, covering everything from the Kentucky Derby to girls' soccer. She started riding at age 8 and was a four-year member of the Pace University equestrian team.
Janet Patton writes about the horse industry and has covered the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Events since the first four-star version in 1998. She missed last year and is excited to be back.
Jumping forever
Posted by Janet Patton on April 29, 2007
A crowd gathered this morning at the entance to the Kentucky Horse Park museum for the unveiling of a full-sized statue of eventing champion Bruce O. Davidson Sr. and Eagle Lion. The beautiful bronze shows Davidson’s lean form stretched back, whip high, as Eagle Lion goes over a Rolex log into the water, ears perked.
“We’re not only unveiling a statute, we’re recognizing an achievement,” said John Nicholson, horse park president. “We’re at the precipice of a great moment in the sport.”
Nicholson said that the seeds of it all were sowed at Davidson’s 1974 win at the World Championships in Burghley, England. “The Golden Age of the horse in America is the 21st century,” Nicholson said.
Davidson, not usually the bubbly gushing sports ambassador, almost seemed a little emotional himself.
“Who do you thank for the life you’ve been given? If there is a way to say thank you for all of you … my supporters … my family …. You’ve backed me for a lifetime and it isn’t over yet,” Davidson said. His son, fellow eventer Buck Davidson, and Buck’s family came out to pose with him by the statue.
Fans shouted out their thanks. “We love you, Bruce!” “Ride on!” Davidson acknowledged it all with a wave.
Sculptor Jean Claggett said the statue was “my chance for a gold medal … the right horse, the right rider and the right place.”
Davidson is truly one of the sports greats — in addition to his 1974 world championship, he won the 1978 championship that helped establish the Horse Park, and won the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event a record six times (according to the statue’s plaque).
In 1995, he became the first American to win the prestigious Badminton Horse Trials in England.
He competed in the Olympics five times, winning team silver in 1972, team gold in 1976, team gold in 1994 and team silver in 1996.
Nicholson remarked that he sometimes feels as if “Doctor Peaches (another of Davidson’s great horses) and others have made their celestial foreverness here. They will run and run and run …”
To which Davidson commented later, “Sounds like Doctor Peaches and I will be riding here for a thousand years. I feel tired already.”
