46 SIDELINES JULY 2012
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
In a storied career of so many successes, there were a couple
of disappointments as well, including the fasco at the 2010 World
Cup Finals. Sapphire was in her best form that weekend in
Geneva and was about to add World Cup Champion to her long list
of accomplishments when a still disputed and dubious vet check
ended those dreams for Ward and his mare. “Disappointment for
me and the horse, of course, but certainly no disappointment in
her performance, she was about to win it all,” Ward noted. “But
certainly disappointment in the bureaucracy, the corruption in the
governing body and when you fnally understand that everything
is fawed. So, yeah, that was disappointing on that level.
Performance-wise, the most disappointing to me was the Nations
Cup at WEG. I feel that we really didn’t perform at our best. I was
pleased that we were able to come back and perform well in the
Individual Final, but in the Nations Cup, I was disappointed in the
job I did there, not the horse, but rather the way I performed. I let
Sapphire down on that day,” he admitted.
Sapphire’s career comes to an end, but hopefully her blood,
her winning attitude and her incredible talent will be passed along
to her offspring in the years ahead. “She’ll be retired to Tom
Grossman’s Bluechip Bloodstock operation, about 45 minutes
away from our place in Brewster,” Ward said. “We, over the last
year, tried to breed her with a carrier mare, but now, we’re going to
try and breed her for real and get some baby Sapphires.”
Any preferences as far as stallions go? “Yes, there’s defnitely
a few, but obviously our frst preference would be Hickstead, so
we’re hoping that can happen,” Ward noted. “Tom Grossman is
more the expert on that, and over the coming weeks and months,
I would like him to weigh in on that and see what he has in mind.
That’s his business, so we’ll leave that to the experts.”
“The story of this horse is really incredible,” Ward concluded.
“Not only the way that we purchased her, but the fact that we have
had three different owners of the horse. At one point, we put our
farm in heavy hock on the bank note to buy her back. The horse
is our family. She has been my best friend for the last decade and
I owe her my life.”
“It’s a sad day in one way that an era comes to an end, but every
time I look at her, I will have these incredible memories of all of
the different things that had to come together so many times,” he
said. “All of the different clutch moments, all the different stresses,
all the times that you think something was going in the wrong
direction and pulled it back together to go in the right direction, it’s
been an incredible, incredible run.”
At the 2010 World Equestrian Games.
Photo by Lauren R. Giannini
Competing at the Winter
Equestrian Festival in 2010.
Photo by Kenneth Kraus/PhelpsSports.com