Bright chestnut with a blazing white star, Kronie is one handsome Hanoverian. But on a recent afternoon, cross-tied in his stall at the Red Barn, all he wanted to do was snap.
“He’s a bit of a grouch about grooming,” Ana Lombera said as she tried to brush his glistening flanks. “Kind of like a little child who doesn’t like to have his hair combed.”
At 17, however, Kronie is no youngster. In fact, he’s retired. A former Grand Prix jumper who was donated to the Stanford equestrian team, Kronie has shivers, a degenerative neurological disease that causes his back legs to shake at times. Allie, another donated horse, has a bad back. Then there’s Rusty, a.k.a. The Couch, whom Lombera calls the “sweetest, sleepiest, funniest horse on the planet—a real dope.”
Kronie, Allie and Rusty may no longer be up to the rigors of elite competition, but they’re more than happy to be adored and cared for by the 31 women and three men who compete on the equestrian team. Each member pays $225 per quarter to help defray the $3,000 per month that it costs to board the team’s six horses. Operating without a full-time coach or trainer, the students had to make the call twice last year to euthanize horses suffering from terminal illnesses—the kind of decision most club sport athletes don’t face.
“It broke our hearts,” says Lombera. “These are not tennis balls or frisbees but living, breathing beings.”
Lombera, a junior double-majoring in biological sciences and chemical engineering, is one of a handful of women in her native Mexico who specialize in the sport known as three-day eventing, a mix of cross-country jumping, show jumping and dressage (using barely perceptible signals to guide the horse into precision movements). As president of Stanford’s equestrian team this year, she says she has two priorities: raising money to support the horses and maintaining a high number of women so that the team can become varsity in 2002. “We’ll be revisiting varsity sports, and depending on our budget, we could add another sport for women,” says athletics director Ted Leland, PhD ’83. “Equestrian and women’s rugby are the two we’d look at.”
Competing in both Western stock seat and English hunt seat equitation in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, the equestrian team has riders with all levels of experience, including beginners. In competitions, they draw lots for the horses they will ride and are judged on their equitation skills—the ability to handle unfamiliar mounts in high-pressure situations.
Between shows, team members spend long hours with the horses in their stalls and in the ring. On a recent afternoon, Lombera put Kronie through exercises recommended by a veterinary chiropractor, coaxing him to stretch his neck from side to side with a brown, Oreo-sized cookie. She spent another 30 minutes putting on polo wraps to protect his legs and bell boots to protect his hooves. Then she saddled him up. The moment she climbed aboard and headed in the direction of a covered arena, the previously cranky Kronie was suddenly transformed—head, ears and tail held proud, clearly pleased to be on display.
“The second he gets in the ring, he takes the bit and goes incredibly strong,” Lombera shouted as horse and rider trotted by. “He starts to breathe like a dragon and the floor shakes with a ‘here I come, I’m a big horse’ stride.”
