Adrian White rides El Dorado at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Photo / Getty Images
With just a week to go before the start of the belated 2020 Olympics, Adrian White's mind will be on the showjumping, and he'll be remembering a horse called Telebrae.
Adrian, 88, is now a retired organic farmer living near Otane in Central Hawke's Bay.
But in 1960, he was a 27-year-old Hawke's Bay shepherd whose father had given him time off, and he was riding a part-Clydesdale Kiwi-bred horse called Telebrae ... and he was in Rome, as New Zealand's first Olympic equestrian.
Adrian says it all began because his mother was a keen horsewoman, and with his siblings having left home he became the focus of her equestrian ambitions — teaching him to ride and taking him to competitions.
Then along came Coloman Bolgar.
Bolgar was Hungarian, a well-known international showjumper who had narrowly missed competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In New Zealand he was nominally a racehorse trainer but his passion was showjumping, holding four-day "Bolgar courses" and known for being very hard on his pupils, renowned for making women riders cry and not above "helping" his pupils over the jumps with a stockwhip.
Bolgar still had Olympic ambitions but now he had them for NZ riders. In 1959 he began his campaign.
He persuaded Mrs HG MacDonald to loan him her horse, Telebrae, which had been performing well with riders Graeme and then David Goodin.
Adrian says David Goodin's father claimed he was too young to go to the Olympics, so Bolgar set his sights on a new rider — Adrian.
"Coloman said 'you will come to my home'," Adrian recalls.
"I was terrified of him so I went. There were two bottles on the kitchen table. It was altar wine. I thought it was fruit juice. Kiwis, especially in Hawke's Bay, especially riding people, didn't drink wine. We drank beer or whisky.
"After my third drink the room started going round and Coloman's beautiful daughter sashayed through the kitchen in a lovely dress, smelling of perfume.
"Coloman said 'you go to Olympics, yes?' And I said 'what a great idea, is she going?' Coloman said 'of course' and I said 'I'm going'.
"Then I remembered ... Coloman we have a problem. I don't have a horse!"
Bolgar delivered Telebrae to Central Hawke's Bay for Adrian to compete for the 1959 season and the NZ Horse Society gave clearance for Adrian and his mount to go to Europe to attempt to qualify for the games — although they wouldn't fund him.
"So we put Telebrae on a ship.
"I'd had the good luck to persuade my friend John Howard to come with me. I built a horse-box and we put it on the ship's deck. John and I worked aboard the ship to pay for our passage.
"Each day we took the horse out and walked it around the deck. We gave the crew horse rides for pocket money — we had £12 by the time we got to England. The captain got annoyed because we were making dents in the teak deck and told us to stop, so I made moccasins for Telebrae's hooves and we kept going."
Arriving in London, the pair bought an old Austin truck for £50 and converted it to a horsebox.
"The British Horse Society booked us into events and as an international rider I was invited to flash parties where I would fill my pockets at the smorgasbord so we could eat when we were travelling. We'd camp on the side of the road, it wasn't a good look.
"One time I won a big event in Switzerland and was paid in freshly minted Louis D'or gold coins in a vellum bag. We bought petrol and I paid with gold coins. The attendant thought we'd robbed a bank and ran for the boss."
Adrian, John and Telebrae were in Europe for three months, camping on the side of the road and competing towards Olympic nomination.
"Telebrae was very long-suffering. We'd lead him through a camping ground, he'd cavaletti over the tent guy ropes, we'd put four pegs in the ground and a rope fence and he'd stay in there.
"One time we were going over the Alps and came across a little village, went into the pub for some refreshment and asked if there was somewhere to put a horse for the night. Someone knew someone, so after dark we led Telebrae down into a cave full of dairy cows wearing cowbells. The cows were very upset when the horse came in. We backed him into a stall beside these disturbed cows ... he took it all in his stride."
John Howard was a cartoonist and ventriloquist.
"Going along the autobahn, Telebrae would put his head over into the cab between us and John would be his voice and we'd have a three-way conversation. At cocktail parties John would imitate a horse and everyone would be looking for where the sound came from."
Finally gaining his nomination, Adrian and co joined Bolgar in Italy, where Bolgar had managed to get them into the military training grounds. Two days before the Games, Bolgar had built a big course and was drilling the pair over the jumps.
"The water truck filling the ditch for the water jump had leaked, making a big wet patch on the take-off side. It was a formidable fence. Telebrae slipped and went into the ditch, stuck upright. I got my boots full of water but stepped off.
"We couldn't get him out. He fell on his back and kicked but got himself out. He had skin off his cannon bone.
"In most cases you'd say 'that was a good trip, let's go home'. But Coloman was a hard man. He said 'keep the horse moving' and had the jumps put up three inches and made me go around."
The day of the Olympic showjumping Adrian and Telebrae were seventh to jump. There were trees all around the ring, shading it.
"It was all black-and-white shadows. Telebrae didn't know if he was Arthur or Martha.
"The second-to-last fence was a rustic post and rails with a black shadow right across. I'd jumped a big double and couldn't see the next fence, I'd landed a bit crooked and did a circle and the crowd yelled 'it's over there you bloody idiot'.
"The commentator told them to stop assisting. We finished that round with a cricket score. In the second round he felt good. He was a tough horse. We finished that round with 12 faults — equal to the gold medallist — but overall we had 88 faults.
"Coloman was ecstatic. He dragged me off the horse and kissed me. That was the only damage I sustained the whole time — a rash on my cheek."
They finished 23rd. After the Games Telebrae was sold to Pat Smythe, the British glamour girl of international showjumping.
"She was high-profile, it was like selling to the Queen. Then we heard from her ... the British Horse Society vet had discovered the horse was blind in one eye. We didn't know.
"Pat was furious. But for us, it explained why he'd had so much trouble with the shadows in the ring at the Games."
Adrian's Olympic career continued as he competed in the Tokyo Olympics four years later, on Eldorado.
To date, only one New Zealand rider has equalled Adrian and Telebrae's 23rd place in Olympic showjumping — Graeme Hansen, 23rd on Saba Sam, Tokyo 1964. And only one has beaten it — Daniel Meech, 12th on Diagonal, Athens.
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