Before telling you about the spring of 1967, and the Pan American Games in Winnipeg later that summer, I need to set the stage. Eventing half a century ago was a different sport from what we are accustomed to in the early twenty-first century. When my mother gave me a USCTA life membership in 1959, the Association was comprised of approximately 100 members. By the time I was training at Gladstone in 1966, it had grown to 250 or more. (Remember, these numbers are national totals.) There were fewer than 10 events scheduled for 1966, two of them Classics. The final Pan Am selection trial at Myopia was one; the other was the Pebble Beach Three-Day Event on the West Coast.
Eventers were tolerated by the USET, which was run by people predominantly interested in show jumping. Dressage hardly existed, and my mother referred to eventing and dressage as “the poor stepchildren” of the Team. My father’s successor as USET president, Whitney Stone, was a big supporter of show jumping, but he also had the foresight to provide funding for an eventing coach and some administrative staff and made the facilities at Gladstone available to eventers. Things began looking up by 1962 when, in addition to a permanent training base, the discipline had a grass-roots organization behind its efforts.
The Founding Fathers of eventing included Philip Hofmann, Alexander Mackay-Smith, and Stuart Treviranus—also Jack Burton and Jack Fritz, who jointly wrote the first rulebook, trained judges and officials, organized events, and generally provided the administrative structure needed for the sport to grow. At one point Jack Burton was called “the Johnny Appleseed of eventing” because a local competition started and flourished everywhere he went.