Michelle Dunn/Jump Canada Hall of Fame/Supplied
No one gave Canada’s equestrians at the 1968 Olympics much of a chance to win a medal.
The Grand Prix show-jumping team had to raise money just to have their horses join them in Mexico City. After arriving, two of the animals became sick. The riders considered finishing fifth or sixth an ambitious goal, an optimistic outlook not shared by many others.
With show jumping to be the final competition of the Games, the president of the Canadian Olympic Association flew home early. He had already dismissed the jumpers as being second-rate in a field where Europeans were expected to dominate. In the end, Howard Radford missed what turned out to be one of the unlikeliest triumphs in Olympic history.
More accustomed to competing before small audiences at county fairs and horse shows, the Canadians shocked the equestrian world, not to mention 84,000 spectators under an unforgiving sun at the Olympic Stadium, to win Canada’s only gold medal of the Games.
“We’re disappointed that we didn’t get more support from the top,” Tom Gayford told Dick Beddoes of The Globe and Mail after the event. “Radford might at least have stuck around to wish us luck.”
Mr. Gayford, who was the eldest member of the jumping team, has died, aged 97.
The unexpected triumph compensated for what had been a disappointing Olympics for Canada during which only four other medals were won, all in the pool.
Mr. Gayford, a stockbroker who had earlier worked in advertising, hailed from one of Canada’s best-known equestrian families. He competed at three Olympic Games and was about to attempt to qualify for a fourth only to abandon the effort after an unknown assailant beat his horse in a mysterious attack at the family farm.
Mr. Gayford, Canadian Equestrian Team, riding Big Dee over one of 13 jumps in Prix des Nations two-round team event at the Royal Winter Fair.John Wood/The Globe and Mail
Thomas Franklin Gayford was born in Toronto on Nov. 21, 1928, an only child for the former Hazel Caroline Arnold and Gordon Thomas Gayford, a stockbroker.
Mr. Gayford made his debut in international competition in 1949 alongside his father on a Canadian military reserve officers’ team at the U.S. National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York. The elder Gayford, a major, joined his son, a lieutenant, and Maj. Charles Baker Jr. and Lt. W.R. Ballard in competing against teams from the United States Army reservists, as well as the Mexican, Chilean and Irish armies, plus the Chilean federal police known as carabineros.
The younger Mr. Gayford was named in 1952 to Canada’s first Olympic equestrian team, for which Maj. Gayford served as manager. Before the competition in Helsinki, the Duke of Beaufort invited the equestrians to spend a month training at Badminton House, his 52,000-acre estate in Gloucestershire, England. The Canadians then took an airplane to the Finnish capital, which reporters described as the first time a team of riders and horses ever flew together to a competition.
The bucolic time on the duke’s estate proved of little help at the Olympics, as Mr. Gayford fell twice and was eliminated at the 29th fence on the cross-country course. He was aboard Constellation, a last-minute substitution for an injured Rocket, the best jumper in the Canadian stable.
Mr. Gayford’s first major international championship came in 1959 at the Oak Brook Polo Club at Hinsdale, Ill., about 30 kilometres west of the main Pan American Games stadium at Soldier Field in Chicago. He rode Royal Beaver to help Canada win the three-day event team gold with brothers Jim and Norm Elder.
While the rider fared poorly at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he co-captained his team to claim the prestigious Prix des Nations Cup at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto in 1966.
The real powers in the sport were to be found overseas. Mr. Gayford spent one season on the European circuit competing against much wealthier riders, including some with centuries-old titles of nobility. They snootily regarded the upstart Canadians as “colonials” and “cowboys.”
The inaugural Jump Canada Hall of Fame gala in 2006 when the 1968 Olympic gold medal show-jumping team of Mr. Gayford, Jim Elder and Jim Day were inducted.Michelle Dunn/Jump Canada Hall of Fame/Supplied
While Canadian Olympic officials agreed to pay for the riders to fly to the Mexico Olympics, they refused to pay to transport their mounts, a logic which baffled Mr. Gayford.
“It would be awfully hard to compete,” he later said, “without a horse.”
The riders’ families and friends began fundraising through sales of postcards and other trinkets at horse shows. Finally, sponsorships were arranged from a brewery and a tobacco company. The first attempt to load the horses on an airplane failed because the animals did not fit. An older cargo plane was then chartered for $11,000 (about $99,000 today).
In Mexico City, the equestrians had to share an overcrowded apartment with weightlifters, two of the riders sleeping in a small kitchen. To add insult to penury, their formal blazers happened to be the same shade of red as the uniform worn by waiters serving athletes in the Olympic Village.
Earlier in the year, Mr. Gayford had suffered a bad facial cut needing 40 stitches after he fell when his horse refused to jump. He was already wearing a back brace after fracturing two vertebrae.
The show-jumping course featured tall jumps and a water hazard. It turned out to be even more challenging than anticipated, as the Dutch designer had neglected to factor in the running track surrounding the grassy infield, forcing the riders to have tighter turns and less space between jumps.
“This was a very tough, compact course,” Mr. Gayford said after the event. “There was no room to gallop your horse up to the next jump. They came at you one after another. It was the toughest course I have ever seen.”
The compressed course offered the Canadians one advantage – they were accustomed to working inside the confines of indoor shows.
As the veteran on the team, Mr. Gayford decided to ride first, so he could act as a scout for his teammates, Jim Day, aboard Canadian Club, a tall, chestnut gelding, and anchor rider Jim Elder, aboard the Immigrant, an Irish-born field hunter that bucked after each jump.
Mr. Gayford rode Big Dee, a bay mare recovering from a near-fatal attack of colic in Mexico, which had been bought a few years earlier for $400 after failing as a racehorse at Fort Erie, Ont.
Mrs. J. H. David presents Prix des Nations to the Canadian Equestrian Team at the Royal Winter Fair Horse Show. From left to right: Moffat Dunlap, Jim Day, Tom Gayford and Jim Elder, whose faultless ride over 26 jumps on The Immigrant helped gain Canada the win.John Wood/The Globe and Mail
Each rider went through the course twice, and the veteran’s first run was the worst for the Canadians, as he recorded 22.25 penalty points. He warned of a daunting trio of consecutive jumps.
“That was the whole key,” he told Global News many years later, “to come through there alive.”
A disastrous final run by a French rider gave the more consistent Canadians a shot at the gold, and Mr. Elder came through. On CBC, sportscaster Gord Atkinson could not help but cheerlead: “It’s up and over the final jump. He’s through! And there’s no doubt Canada has won itself a gold medal!”
About 150 supporters greeted Mr. Gayford and Mr. Elder with cheers and confetti at the Toronto airport on their return. (Mr. Day, accompanying the horses, arrived a day later.) One fan brought an understated sign reading, “Well done, Canada’s equestrians.”
A poll of 133 sportswriters and broadcasters conducted by the Canadian Press wire service awarded the upstart horsemen team of the year honours for 1968 with the Stanley Cup-winning Montreal Canadiens a close second. The equestrians got 274 points to the hockey team’s 231. The other runners-up included the Olympic women’s swim team, the Grey Cup-winning Ottawa Rough Riders football team, Ron Northcott’s world champion curling rink and Minto Cup-winning Oshawa (Ont.) Green Gaels junior lacrosse team.
The vote was a controversial one, as not everyone considered the equestrians to be athletes.
“We’re not members of the locker-room crowd,” Mr. Gayford told Frank Orr of the Toronto Star. “But, gradually, people are accepting what we do as a sport and us as athletes. Anyone who doesn’t think so should try co-ordinating 1,200 pounds [544 kilograms] of horse around a course of jumps such as we faced at Mexico. I think it takes considerable athletic ability to do that.”
Other triumphs followed the Olympics, including team show-jumping gold medal at the 1970 world championships at La Baule, France, and the 1971 Pan Am Games at Cali, Colombia. Mr. Gayford rode Big Dee in both.
On the eve of a Canadian Olympic qualifying grand prix in 1972, an unknown assailant snuck into Gayford Stables at Gormley, Ont., to beat Big Dee in her stall. The horse suffered a badly bruised and swollen left front leg, as well as three welts across her shoulder. As Big Dee recuperated by soaking in a hot tub and having cold water sprayed on her injuries, Mr. Gayford attempted to qualify aboard Dreamy Jo, an inexperienced bay gelding. He finished last in the opening round and scratched the horse before announcing his semi-retirement as a competitive show jumper.
In 1978, Mr. Gayford was named chef d’équipe of the national team, a role in which he served for 18 years. He also worked for many years as a show-jumping coach, including the jumping course for the 1976 Olympics at Bromont, Que. He was also involved in polo, fox hunting and training thoroughbred racehorses.
Mr. Gayford, a resident of Aurora, Ont., died in hospice care in Toronto on April 26. He leaves the former Martha Bruce West, his wife of 61 years. He also leaves five daughters, all of whom have been competitive riders, and seven grandchildren. An earlier marriage to the former Alice Daphne Scott ended in divorce.
He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1968, the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1971 and the three Olympic riders were among the inaugural class named to the Jump Canada Hall of Fame in 2006. Two years later, he was again inducted into the Jump Canada hall as a coach and trainer.
Back in 1968, CBC-TV interrupted the broadcast of The Tommy Hunter Show to air the medal presentation live from the Olympic Stadium.
The three Canadians rode sedately to a podium in the infield before dismounting to accept their gold medals from Prince Philip and Mexican president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz. After the ceremony, the riders returned to their steeds only for the two Jims to break into a playful gallop across the field and up a ramp, while Mr. Gayford looked on.
The younger rider won the impromptu race.
“Jim cheated,” Mr. Elder quipped. “I didn’t know where the finish line was.”
As it turned out, Canada would not win another Summer Olympic gold medal for 16 years.
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