Snowbound

Snowbound was a mediocre, unsound racehorse, kicking around Northern California in the early 1960s who went on to make history by carrying Bill Steinkraus to the first individual Olympic Gold Medal ever won by a U.S. rider, capturing Mexico City's show jumping Gold in 1968. Discovered by John (later Sir John) Galvin as a green hunter being shown by Show Jumping Hall of Famer Barbara Worth Oakford, who had bought him off the racetrack, Snowbound…
A brown gelding just over 16 hands in height and foaled in 1958, Snowbound was by Hail Victory out of Gay Alvena and had jumping blood on both sides of his pedigree.
He was precocious from the start and equally at home indoors and out, though he was never much at home in heavy footing. In 1965, he jumped double clears to clinch the Nations' Cups of London and Dublin, won the Grand Prix of New York, and capped the year by helping the U.S. win two more Nations' Cups.
The following year, he won the Grand Prix at Harrisburg and the Democrat Trophy in New York, and he contributed to another Nations' Cup victory.
This was Snowbound's pattern: try to jump double clear rounds in Nations' Cups--over one stretch he jumped 15 Nations' Cup clear rounds in 16 attempts--and try to win Grand Prix. Always threatened by recurrence of the tendon trouble that had driven him from the track, Snowbound was too valuable to the Team to risk in ordinary classes and was shown lightly.
In 1968, he jumped double clears in all of the European Nations' Cups in which he competed. He also won London's coveted Daily Mail Cup prior to the Olympic Games. At the Olympics, he jumped one of only two clear rounds in the first round of the individual competition, and though he finished on three legs, incurred only a single fault over the huge fences of the second round to win the Gold.
In 1970, Snowbound won four individual competitions in Europe--two in Lucerne and two in Aachen--but ended up sidelined again for most of 1971. The following year, his preparations to defend his Olympic title went well, but though he scored several victories in minor international competitions, he failed to qualify for the second round in the individual competition at the Olympics, and Steinkraus was obliged to ride Main Spring, a 2003 Show Jumping Hall of Fame inductee, on the Silver Medal-winning U.S. team.
After the Munich Olympics, Snowbound was retired to the Galvins’ farm outside Dublin. He and Steinkraus had shared a remarkable career and had become one of the best-known horse-and-rider combinations ever to represent the United States. Though Snowbound set no endurance records, he combined remarkable gymnastic ability with a stubborn determination not to hit fences. He was a truly extraordinary water jumper and will always be remembered for his consistent brilliance when the chips were down.

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