Stark, 53, got hugs all around, including from third-place finisher Karen O’Connor. They made a funny sight, Stark sitting on Full Circle and O’Connor on Theodore — he was more than a foot above her.

Full Circle had won a three-star last year in Germany and Stark said he knew Full Circle had more and so Stark came out of his first retirement in 2000.

“I felt he was a four-star horse,” Stark said. He’s retiring the horse even though he’s fairly young — only 13 — because he’s been injury-plagued.

Stark is a four-time Olympic silver medalist, multiple European champion and won the Badminton Horse Trials in 1986, 1988, and 1999. He is also the only person ever to have finished first and second at Badminton in the same year — in 1988 he was first on Jaybee and second on Glenburnie.

Stark had ridden several times at Rolex, taking both Saucy Brown and Arakai around the four-star course. He said he was happy to be going out here, saying the American fans had been great.

“What a send-off I’ve had, thank you,” Stark said.

Eventers in general, and Australians, are tough. According to the Rolex website, Ryan is flying home tomorrow to Sydney and riding in competition again on Thursday.

Cars crawled for miles in both directions but Newberry made light of it. “It’s just something that’s got to be fixed. We’ll sit down and find a more effective way to get everybody in,” Newberry said. Although he’s thinking ahead to the WEG in 2010, he wants things better for next year, he said.

“If I’d come out Georgetown Street, I wouldn’t have had any problem,” noted Newberry.

The amazing Theodore O’Connor ends up third, just behind Phillip Dutton and Connaught.

“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.”

One out: Will Faudree and Antigua, who were in fourth place after yesterday’s cross-country, have withdrawn.