My speed round with her was such a perfect round: every distance, every stride, I almost never had to touch the reins. I was fifth—top six is a good result. After she jumped double-clear in the Nations Cup, I was in first place. I thought, “Wow, that’s really cool.” That was a moment in which I was consumed with pride.
The thing that struck me the most about the Final Four was how proud I was that Fein Cera was named Best Horse. That’s such a special thing. I had worked with this mare for the 18 months prior, and she was beautifully schooled and looked so good. And what an experience to ride all those other horses. They each were incredible…and so different. It was fun. But do I believe that format legitimately picked the World Champion? Definitely not, and the FEI has agreed. Starting with the 2018 WEG, the Final Four concept was dropped. I feel strongly about the bond and experience between a horse and rider. It’s not the rider that wins the medal; it’s the horse-and-rider combination. I totally think changing horses doesn’t belong. Five rounds are enough to decide the World Champion.
Chris Kappler
From 20th Century Gold
to 21st Century Gold
Chris began riding in Illinois with his mother, Kay, and sister, Katie. He got his show career under way with Alex Jayne and continued his development with George Morris at Hunterdon, the legendary stable in Pittstown, New Jersey, which graduated many show ring stars. After earning top equitation results, including second in the ASPCA Maclay and USET Talent Search Finals, as well as third in the AHSA Medal Finals, he went on to national and international Grands Prix. Chris was named Midwest Rider of the Year in 1987, 1988, 1989, and 1991. In 1989, he received the USET’s Lionel Guerrand-Hermes Trophy, awarded to the young rider who “exemplifies outstanding sportsmanship and horsemanship.”
Chris is the winner of more than 100 Grands Prix, including the American Invitational and American Gold Cup, each three times. Internationally, he took team gold and individual silver with Royal Kaliber at the 2003 Pan American Games, and subsequently was named the U.S. Equestrian Federation’s Equestrian of the Year. In 2004, Chris and Royal won team gold and individual silver at the Olympic Games in Athens. His other top horses included Seven Wonder, Concorde, and VDL Oranta.
Since retiring from competition in 2009, Chris has focused on training horses and riders. He is a founder and former president of the North American Riders Group, and has served on the USEF board of directors. Chris also has been a selector for U.S. show jumping teams.
Royal Kaliber jumped beautifully in the team competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the culmination of his career. Chris Kappler developed the stallion who contributed to the U.S. silver medal. The United States later was upgraded to gold after the winning German team was dropped in the rankings following a positive drug test for one of its horses.
As a member of the U.S. gold medal show jumping team at the Athens Olympics in 2004, I was struck by the similarities between our squad and the previous U.S. team that won gold at the Olympics, 20 years earlier in Los Angeles. It was almost an identical parallel in terms of the composition of the team, with an identical result.
In 1984, each horse on the team was amazing: Touch of Class with Joe Fargis, who won individual gold; Abdullah, Conrad Homfeld’s individual silver medal ride; Calypso, the longtime mount of Melanie Smith, and Albany, ridden by Leslie Burr.
Then, if you advance two decades, you have four more superstar horses. Fein Cera was coming off an incredible 2002 World Equestrian Games, where Peter Wylde rode her to individual bronze. Then there was Sapphire with McLain Ward and Authentic, ridden by Beezie Madden. These two horses at the start of their stratospheric careers would go on to contribute to team gold again four years later in the Olympics held in Hong Kong, where Beezie also took the individual bronze.
My horse, Royal Kaliber, was in his absolute prime in 2003 and 2004. No horse at the time had won more in his career. Interestingly, I was the first person in 12 years to be subjectively selected, after complete objective selection had not always paid off.
When I was growing up, watching Conrad and Abdullah, I dreamed of doing what they had done. Then to duplicate Conrad’s 1984 results in Athens, home of the original Olympic Games, was, for me, a dream come true. Like Conrad, I won individual silver in a jump-off, even though, through a sad twist of fate, I did not finish my round after Royal got hurt in the process.
There was such a shift in the way America picked its equestrian teams after we went to objective selection following a 1990 lawsuit over who made the squad for the first World Equestrian Games. Between 1983 and 2004, there was a dramatic change. We had gone from Bert de Némethy, the longtime team coach, to Frank Chapot, who was team captain during his riding days. Bert handed over a team that was in a very good place, so in 1984, Frank was able to step in with a squad that could win all those medals over an innovative course designed by Bert. With that 1984 course, Bert set the style for tests that were much more technical and “careful,” with related distances playing a major role. It was the beginning of an evolution to a more technical and difficult style of riding and training you needed to succeed over the courses. He also used lighter materials than were customary during the past in his courses, which asked as much of the rider as it did of the horse.
In my second-to-last junior year, we were at the Traders’ Point Horse Show in Indianapolis, where we watched the fantastic win by the 1984 U.S. team on television. The whole thing was incredibly inspirational and made you want to be an Olympian. Later that year, George Morris was judging the AHSA Medal finals in Harrisburg and pinned this wet-behind-the-ears Midwest kid third. He told my mom that my style of riding was very much like Conrad’s.
That became my visual. Riders often find someone they identify with and tend to watch, whether it’s body shape, mentality, or riding style. With Conrad, I admired his body of work, what he was able to accomplish through his riding, his techniques, and his partnerships with his horses.
Frank was involved with restructuring over two decades to get the United States back on track where we duplicated our 1984 win in 2004, after some dramatic highs and lows; two Olympic silver medals in 1988 and 1996, but no Olympic team medals in 1992 and 2000, and no team medals at all in the World Equestrian Games from 1990 through 2002. The team underwent pretty tremendous turmoil with the 1990 lawsuit. So it was incredibly satisfying for Frank to be able to finish his time as coach with a gold medal 20 years later and hand the team off to the next coach, George Morris, in a position that allowed for a very structured format, including subjectivity.
I was traveling through Europe in 2000 when I tried Royal Kaliber as an eight-year-old in Henk Nooren’s small indoor arena in Holland. We had a fantastic trial, so I went back to America and talked to Kathy and Hal Kamine about him. We had been discussing getting a horse together, but this was the first one that got me excited enough to want to work with them. They were very gracious and bought the horse for me, with the plan to try to develop to the highest international level that we could. Although Royal was not an approved stallion, he had really great old Dutch bloodlines. He was by Ramiro out of a Voltaire mother.
That year and the next, I really started to develop him. The old Cincinnati Horse Show was very much like the American Invitational. They always had a fantastic crowd, lots of atmosphere, and a course designed by Richard Jeffery. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since Royal and I had jumped a Grand Prix together for the first time just the previous week. I decided to wing it in this big class, even though I knew it would be a stretch for him at the age of eight.
When he walked in the arena there, he grew six inches and was incredible when he jumped around. That night, he was double-clear and finished third. I