Nice articles in Toronto Star today
http://www.thestar.com/article/483543
Faultless trip for Canadian
Canadian Eric Lamaze wipes a tear from his eye after listening to the national anthem at the medal presentation ceremony for the equestrian jumping individual event on Aug. 21, 2008. Lamaze won gold in the event in a jump-off.
BEIJING–Twice Eric Lamaze was excluded from the Olympics for drug infractions. Twice he was banned for life from his sport. So when he finally found himself on the top step of an Olympic podium – his career finally wrapped in gold after so much tarnish – he cried.
Then he thanked the supporters who carried him through those storms.
“There was a time that I was so far away from even dreaming of this,” Lamaze said. "That this has happened, that it was possible for me, it involved so many people other than just me, the people who have supported me and stood by me and encouraged me to move on and be the best that I can be.
“To really show such great support in a time when it was so easy not to support me, I do think of them. That’s where the tears come from.”
His victory in individual show jumping was the second medal of these Games for the 40-year-old Montreal native, who teamed with Ian Millar, Mac Cone and Jill Henselwood to win a team silver earlier this week. It was Canada’s first ever gold medal in an individual equestrian event and its first of any colour since 1976. Perhaps a less likely candidate for such glory among the horsey set would be difficult to identify.
Lamaze, who posted three perfect rides aboard Hickstead, won a timed jump-off with Rolf-Goran Bengtsson. The Swedish rider picked up four jumping faults on the third and deciding trip around the circuit at the Sha Tin racetrack.
Bengtsson’s horse, Ninja, clipped the final gate in the jump-off, setting the stage for Lamaze and Hickstead to go clear – and Canada’s third gold medal of the Games. Beezie Madden of the U.S., aboard Authentic, got the bronze.
Jill Henselwood of Oxford Mills, Ont., did not finish her second ride after picking up four jumping faults in the first round. Ian Millar of Perth, Ont., had eight jumping faults in the opening round and failed to advance to the final.
Although Lamaze is today a prosperous trainer and seller of horses on his farm in Schomberg, Ont., and though he became the first North American to win more than $1 million in prize money on the grand prix circuit last year, he is the antithesis of the bluebloods who populate his sport. The son of a father he has never met and a drug-addicted mother who was raised by an alcoholic grandmother while his mother did time in prison, he didn’t attend high school and lived as a street kid in Montreal as a teenager.
“His first exposure to cocaine was as a fetus,” Tim Danson, the Toronto lawyer who once defended him, has said. “His life has been tragic beyond comprehension.”
Said Lamaze in a recent interview with the Star’s Randy Starkman: “School was no good for me. My mother was no good for me. Nothing was good. I had nothing to lose. I went on an adventure.”
The adventure, the solace, came as a rider of horses. Bereft of the means to buy his own steed but gifted with a knack for relating to animals, he became a so-called catch rider, earning $25 a mount to take the horses nobody else wanted to ride at shows and have them in the ring in short order.
“I didn’t have any money to be in the sport. I didn’t have a family buying me horses. I was kind of the poor kid around the block just showing up and seeing what somebody would give me,” he said. “I’m a very unusual character to have come in the sport, I will say that. You don’t see it often.”
He went from unusual to unwanted after his riding career was publicly derailed by his drug-related missteps. He twice tested positive for cocaine, once in the lead-up to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and again after a complicated series of occurrences before the Sydney Olympics. After Lamaze registered a positive test for what he said was a supplement and was informed he was banned for life by the World Anti-Doping Agency, according to his telling, he went on a bender that included cocaine use.
The ban for the supplement was rescinded, but he tested positive for the cocaine. He was banned again and missed the 2000 Games – Danson said around that time that Lamaze required a suicide watch – and even his teammates lost faith.
“The rules are made for everyone else, is his attitude,” J.P. Hayes, a member of Canada’s equestrian team, said of Lamaze at the time. “He flaunts it at you.”
But Lamaze, speaking after his win on a conference call emanating from the equestrian park in Hong Kong, reiterated his public disdain for the anti-doping authorities. The mandate of the drug testers, he has argued, is to catch cheaters. He has admitted to being many things, but never one of those.
“What they wanted to do with me was take my livelihood away and everything else,” he said from Hong Kong. “And I don’t think that’s constructive for somebody who’s struggling, to take their passion away. … I feel very strongly about that. And that’s what I feel was the biggest lesson to be learned, is that everybody does deserve a second chance or a third chance if you believe they can actually come back and do some good. In my case, I had a lot of people believing in me.”
Lamaze didn’t mention his friends by name. Time was short and, he said, he had people “waiting for me to celebrate.” He has spoken in the past of his appreciation for his neighbour Frank Watt and his tennis partner Eddie Creed, his girlfriend, Tiffany Foster, and the owners of his horse, John and Dondi Fleischhacker.
His friends’ faith, which he talked before the Games of paying back with his performance, might now breed more in others.
“(My story) can show young people it doesn’t matter what happens, you can go bankrupt, you can have a drug problem, you can have an alcohol problem, you can make a terrible mistake, whatever,” Lamaze has said. “There’s a chance to come back and redeem yourself in life and put the pieces back together.”
If Lamaze’s horse should get some credit, perhaps so should the Netherlands. Hickstead, a 12-year-old brown Dutch Warmblood stallion, was bred in Holland. But if Lamaze has proved anything with his rebirth, it’s that provenance isn’t necessarily important. Once you’re in the saddle, the horse doesn’t know whether you come from money or from the streets of Montreal.
“He just knows I have money now,” Lamaze has said, “because he knows he was expensive.”
With files from The Canadian Press
http://www.thestar.com/article/483480
Stable rejoices in Olympic gold
Riders work out on Aug. 21, 2008 at Torrey Pines Stables in Schomberg, Ont., where Olympic gold medallist Eric Lamaze and his steed Hickstead train.
Tears of joy, champagne fill local barnyard as Eric Lamaze rides to an historic win
The brut taste of champagne mingled with the malodorous scent of manure yesterday at the elegant Torrey Pines Stables, summer home to Canada’s most recent gold medallists: Eric Lamaze and his acclaimed steed Hickstead.
It was here, in the green pastures of Schomberg, north of Toronto, at Lamaze’s long-time training grounds, that 12 of his close friends and colleagues gathered in his barnyard office to watch the 40-year-old equestrian and his Dutch-bred stallion capture Olympic gold.
“The girls (who train the horses) came in early to clean the stalls so we could watch the first round all together,” said Sarah Weir, Lamaze’s personal assistant. “Seeing him on the podium, it was amazing to watch someone you know who worked that hard to get so far.”
Shortly after Lamaze and Hickstead’s victory, Weir and others popped the cork on a bottle of bubbly and drank to the victory.
But they didn’t celebrate for long.
“We couldn’t. We had to get back to work,” said Courtney Vince, 29, a practice rider who has worked for Lamaze for 15 years and whose chores include riding his champion horse.
Lamaze and Hickstead may be the pride of the stable, but there were 45 other horses at Torrey Pines yesterday in need of grooming, feeding and riding, including two of Lamaze’s own horses, Takeoff and Manolo, who stood long-faced as they licked their teeth and looked oblivious to the tears of joy being spilled over glasses of champagne just down the hall.
But Hickstead’s triumph in Beijing may not have been completely lost on his equine colleagues as Takeoff stood forlorn in the champion’s stall back home and gazed out Hickstead’s window over rolling hills toward the Far East, his victorious rider and the horse in the spotlight.
Vince and Frank Watt, a long-time friend of Lamaze, said they always believed in Lamaze’s abilities and that it was never hard to stand by his side, even when cocaine addiction caused him to miss two Olympic Games.
“Anyone who has known him believes in him,” said Vince. “Watching him on the podium, it made all of us cry. He’s more humble than most … and the first person to give Hickstead credit.”
Lamaze’s humble nature, Vince and Weir said, is what makes him such a good partner to the proud, powerful and sometimes arrogant Hickstead.
“The two go well together. They both have a lot of presence,” said Weir, although only Hickstead nickers when he prances through the barn.
Lamaze is expected to return to Torrey Pines Stables today. Hickstead is expected back in Schomberg after a competition stop in Calgary.
I’ll try to get my slow dial-up computer to load them. Couldn’t find Eric’s medal ceremony, but there are others I’d like to see if possible.