February 16, 2026 
When I first decided to become someone who writes about our sport of show jumping, I looked to the famous sportswriters of the early- and mid-century who worked during the years when horse racing and boxing were the United States’ foremost spectator sports.
A time pre-television, a time when radio and writing—words—connected people to sport. A time when automobiles were fairly new and people had not yet forgotten what it was to live with horses.
It was last year and we were driving home to Wellington, Florida, where I have my stable, from another horse show we had attended a few hours away. As the passenger, I offered to read to my companion something about horses from a collection of these old sports columns I had with me. I opened the book to “Death of a Racehorse” written in 1949 by W.C. Heinz, who began as a war correspondent and in the decades that followed the war, became one of the most famous and acclaimed sportswriters of all time.
“They were going to the post for the sixth race at Jamaica [racetrack in Queens, New York that operated from 1903 to 1959], two year olds, some making their first starts, to go five and a half furlongs for a purse of four thousand dollars…”
The story is about the young Thoroughbred Air Lift, making his first start, the full brother of 1946 triple crown winner Assault.
A google brings me trackside to Kentucky in 1946, the first gem in the triple crown. The black-and-white scratchy newsreel shows important people in the stands, the camera moving quickly from one to the next—a treasure secretary, the Kentucky governor, a series of women who, because of their instant recognizability, are referred to in the simplest terms, Mrs. — and Mrs. —, one with a full dead fox around her neck, glass eyes staring off her shoulder.
Assault, hardly the favorite, having stepped on a surveyor’s stake with his right front as a young horse, driving it through and permanently deforming his hoof, wins the race by eight lengths, then goes on to win the Preakness by a neck and the Belmont by three.
But Assault, the “Club-Footed Comet,” would turn out to be sterile, so the appearance at the track of his full brother brought everyone’s eyes to the race. The future of the sport would be written by this version of Assault, who, along with his deformed hoof, suffered from fetlock, knee, kidney, and bleeding problems.
Not so Air Lift. He was sure-footed, healthy, perfect.
“They were off well, although Air Lift was fifth. They were moving toward the first turn, and now Air Lift was fourth. They were going into the turn, and now Air Lift was starting to go, third perhaps, when suddenly he slowed, a horse stopping, and below in the stands you could hear a sudden cry—”
Air Lift’s leg was broken.
The men are running to the turn where Air Lift stands, blood running down his ruined leg, his jockey standing alone beside him, crying.
The scene mirrored the show we had just left. A few hours earlier, a horse had been fatally injured in the warmup. A freak accident that briefly stopped the show. Immediately, out came large fabric barriers, which surrounded the horse to hide its injury and eventual death.
Death in show jumping is rare, but when it occurs, it is hidden. Hidden for the spectators, to shield them from what has happened and will happen, and for the participants, so those last, heart-rending moments can be attended by some sort of privacy.
“They had sponged off the colt, after they had given him the shot to deaden the pain, and now he stood, feeding quietly from some hay they had placed at his feet. In the distance you could hear the roar of the crowd in the grandstand, but beyond it and above it you could hear thunder and see the occasional flash of lightning.”
Rain begins to fall on the assembled grooms, veterinarians, track workers. They wait for the owner of the horse, away at the yearling sales in Kentucky, to give permission for the euthanasia.
“‘Full brother of Assault.’… ‘It don’t make no difference now. He’s done.’ … ‘But damn, what a grand little horse.’ … ‘Ain’t he a horse?’”
I don’t remember who died that day at the show now, a few years later. I only remember sitting in the VIP and looking past tables and tents to the arrangement of fabric barriers in the warmup. I remember a feeling like everything was frozen—the action at the show, the people sitting quietly at their tables, our hearts inside our chests.
A feeling like maybe everything should stop forever, but it doesn’t. We just hold one moment in this sudden and tender way. A moment devoid of frivolity and pettiness, a moment that passes as soon as the horse, its people, and the ambulance leave the ring.
“They moved the curious back, the rain falling faster now, and they moved the colt over close to a pile of loose bricks. Gilman [assistant veterinarian] had the halter and Catlett [head veterinarian] had the gun, shaped like a bell with a handle at the top. This bell he placed, the crowd silent, on the colt’s forehead, just between the eyes. The colt stood still and then Catlett, with the hammer in his other hand, struck the handle of the bell. There was a short, sharp sound and the colt toppled onto his left side, his eyes staring, his legs straight out, the free legs quivering.
“Aw,—” someone said.
That was all they said.”
And we said nothing that afternoon, other than to relate to each other the bare facts. We said nothing in the car after the death earlier and the death in the pages I was reading. We only felt suddenly all we didn’t say and couldn’t say. And I got the feeling like the silence was not a respectful tribute, but a refuge for a certain kind of cowardice.
Because I was crying for the colt Air Lift, that two-year-old colt famous only for his relations and then his death, a death turned from something too terrible to acknowledge into something important because someone was there with the words to make it so.
Someone was there to tell all that had happened and in this way to let us know that it mattered. So that now, more than 75 years later, someone is still crying for what was and could have been.
“They worked quickly, the two vets removing the broken bones as evidence for the insurance company, the crowd silently watching. Then the heavens opened, the rain pouring down, the lightning flashing, and they rushed for cover of the stables, leaving alone on his side near a pile of bricks, the rain running off his hide, dead an hour and a quarter after his first start, Air Lift, son of Bold Venture, full brother of Assault.”
