Ryan’s Son
“HE has the body of a carthorse but the engine of a thoroughbred,” uttered the straight talking Harvey Smith after watching the mighty Ryan’s Son.
John Whitaker’s distinctive partner of 14 years took him to the Olympics, Hickstead Derby glory and won a host of championship medals. But the Yorkshireman’s first impressions of this 16hh bay gelding with a broad blaze and two long white stockings certainly didn’t match his world-conquering aspirations. Little did he know that Ryan’s Son would help shape showjumping history. Without him, John says, he’d still be a milkman.
“He had massive feet, a ewe neck, feathers on his heels and a long back,” remembers John, who was 17 when he first set eyes on a four-year-old Ryan’s Son at an unaffiliated show at Shay Lane Stables near Halifax in 1972.
“My father came up to me and said, ‘I really like the look of Ryan’s Son.’ I replied that it was only because he looked like a carthorse – he’d worked with that kind of horse on the farm all his life, so that was his thing. But
