Jim Wofford Had Quite an Olympic Ride By Jim Wofford Second of Two Articles Middleburg’s Jim Wofford won a team silver medal from the Mexico City Olympics aboard Kilkenny in 1968. Over his illustrious career, Jim won team silver at the 1972 Munich Olympics, individual silver at the 1980 Fontainebleau AlterAlternate Olympics, individual bronze at the 1970 World Championships and team bronze at the 1978 World Championships. He’s also served as president of the American Horse Shows Association and vice presipresident of the USET and been inducted into the U.S. Eventing Hall of Fame. Today, he travels the country as a highly sought-after clinician and coach. This article first appeared in The Practical Horseman.
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British cargo ship, the Parthia, and once they got to Europe they travtraveled by rail, as horse vans were not yet in general usage. Helsinki was a lovely venue for the equestrian part of the 1952 Games, but given my age at the time, I was far more interested in watching the sinister-appearing KGB agents hustle the Soviet Union’s riders out of a van and into locked stables than I was in the fact that the USET won bronze medals in both eventing and show-jumpshow-jumping. This was the first instance I can recall of the trend towards the popoliticization of the Olympics, but the Games have never been as pure as their founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, would have wanted us to believe. I wasn’t around yet, but my parparents were in the stands in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics when Hitler refused to award the gold medal to Jesse Owens, an African AmeriAmeri-
he last time the U.S. Army fielded an OlymOlympic equestrian team was 1948. By the 1952 Olympics in HelHelsinki, Finland, the OlymOlympic equestrian team was a civilian operation. The U.S. Army had mechanized in 1949, which meant the cavcavalry was disbanded. In 1951 the USET was formed “to train and field teams for ininternational equestrian comcompetition.” My father, Col. John W. Wofford, was the first presipresident of the USET, as well as coach of the eventing and show-jumping teams. He must have been a busy man. The team training center in those days was at my parparents’ Rimrock Farm in KanKanPhoto by Douglas Lees Jim Wofford sas. In the summer of 1952, we boarded a special train in JuncJunc- can who won the 100 meters. This tion City, Kansas, and I remember trend has continued in various riding it to a siding at Fort Riley, forms with the Communist riots where the horses and equipment and Black Power protest in 1968 Septemwere loaded. The three teams left in Mexico City, the Black Septemfor a European tour leading up to ber terrorists’ murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972, and the Helsinki Olympics. One thing about training teams the U.S. and Soviet boycotts of the that has not changed is the concon- 1980 and 1984 Games. As a personal aside, my oldoldtinuing need for European expoexposure before big competitions. The est brother, Jeb Wofford, was on horses crossed the Atlantic on a the bronze medal eventing team
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