Shoeing for the World: Kelvin Lymer's Shoeing Role at Hong Kong Olympics

Kelvin Lymer of Worcester, England will be working as the official farrier of the Olympics in Hong Kong for three weeks, along with Ian Hughes of Wales. Kelvin and Ian will run the forge and shoeing clinic, facilitate the work of team farriers from other countries and help with horses from countries (the majority) who are not sending farriers. That must be his very favorite good-luck apron. One of the apron manufacturers hopefully sent him a new one to wear in Hong Kong! Picture by Emma Attwood, Worcester News

British farrier Kelvin Lymer DipWCF is serving as one of two official full-time event farriers for the 2008 Olympics Equestrian Events.

Kelvin, along with Ian Hughes of Wales, arrived last week and is staffing a farrier's forge and shoeing shop that are designed for use by both the official farriers and also to assist team farriers from different countries who will be attending. They'll also be helped by Australian Greg Murray as well as farriers from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, since there is no racing in the Territory during August. Kelvin will be in Hong Kong for three weeks; Ian will be on hand for eight weeks, since he will also be the farrier for the Paralympics in September.

Kelvin is no stranger to the bright lights of major competition; he has been the official farrier for the British endurance teams at events like the World Equestrian Games.

There's a great article about Kelvin in the Worcester News, his home paper in England (except for the part where they spelled his name wrong). Click here to read a lot more about Kelvin and his plans for Hong Kong.

As far as I know, this is the first time that the Olympics or any big FEI event has hired full time farriers to staff a purpose-built clinic for the hoofcare needs of the horses. It's an honor to be asked to shoe for your nation, to be sure, but to be asked to shoe for the world: that's a lifetime achievement. Three solid weeks on the job will be filled with great memories for Kelvin...and a lot of work and responsibility. He'll have great stories to tell when he gets home!

Meet Rodney King: Rood and Riddle Has a New Accent on Farriery

Rodney and Natalie King left their home and horses in New Zealand for the exposure to lameness and hoofcare technology at Kentucky's Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital Podiatry Clinic. From the sounds of it, Rodney will be bringing skills and experience that will make his trip mutually beneficial!

For many in the USA, a life’s dream would be to visit the sparkling green country of New Zealand. We’d buy horses or we’d go skiing, or we’d race a sailboat, or bungee-jump into a rainforest. For Americans who’ve been there, New Zealand always tops the list of places they’d like to escape to again…and not come back.

So why would anyone leave?

New Zealand is also one of the horsiest places on earth. There’s a racetrack in every town, the three-day event riders are major sports personalities, and a farrier can make a good living there.
But Rodney King thinks there’s more to see and do in his career as a farrier.

Last week, Rodney started his new job as a farrier at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Rood and Riddle has a very successful “podiatry” clinic staffed by a talented team of vets and farriers and technicians…and loaded with cases and clients.

Rodney’s accent should puzzle the Kentuckians!

Rodney knows what he is getting into. He visited Rood and Riddle last year on a New Zealand Equine Research Foundation scholarship and, when a position became open, he applied for it.

Now Rodney and his wife Natalie are living in Lexington, and learning the American way of doing things. At Rood and Riddle, that means lots of aluminum glue-on shoes, lots of laminitis, and lots of long hours. In return, a farrier or vet has the chance of a lifetime to learn about the horse’s foot and be around some of the leading minds in the world of the hoof.

Rodney has already passed his AFA journeyman certification test and, in fact, was told that he had the highest written-portion score of the year.

Dr Scott Morrison, director of the clinic, said today that Rodney “fit right in and went right to work. He knows what the routine is,” he said.

Welcome to America, Rodney!

But is it art? New York museum goers gawk at hanging horse

Visitors to a New York City museum are struck by the ironic juxtaposition of a horse hanging over their heads. How'd it get way up there? Who put it  there? And why head first?

Well, art is in the eye of the beholder, we are told, but also in the intent of the artist. Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan admits that this installation currently on view in Manhattan is not a real horse, but a taxidermied horse hide (so where do you get one of those? on eBay?) and a fiberglas resin artistic vision of a horse.

Ok, Maurizio, that explains the horse. Now explain the wall.

The "piece" is part of "After Nature,'' the summer group exhibition at New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art. According to the press, "the show pits the helplessly human against the forces of the natural world to decidedly uplifting effect". We are told that the dangling horse "forms a powerful allegory of cruelty, madness, failed ambition and redemption".

Of course, I am distracted by the odd angle of the dangling lower legs and see another scenario entirely. That horse didn't collide with the wall at a gallop; if he had, his front legs would be through the wall. Standing still, he for some reason put his head through a hole in the wall, perhaps to get a carrot, and got stuck. Or maybe he's a cribber, and he gnawed his way through the wall. He was standing on mid-winter Vermont snowpack when he got stuck, and it melted underneath him, leaving him dangling. So they moved the entire wall to Manhattan and installed it in the museum.

That's why I write about horses, not art. I don't go looking for cruelty, madness, or failed ambition when I go to a museum. Do you? Redemption, maybe.

Read more about the artist and exhibits at bloomberg.com.

Big Relief: Big Brown Wins Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, Shoes Still Glued

I guess he can hold his head high again. Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner (and Belmont also-ran) Big Brown returned to form this afternoon and won the Haskell Invitational Stakes at New Jersey's Monmouth Park.

That answers one question, but opens a lot of others. Will the van take him back to Aqueduct on Long Island...or will it swerve northward toward Saratoga, where the bigger test and a rematch with his Triple Crown mates might be waiting at the Travers Stakes on August 23?

Hoof repair expert Ian McKinlay checked in today and reported that Big Brown is still wearing the glue-on Yasha shoes with thick black heel cushions.

Remember, Ian will be speaking on hoof repair and glue-on shoes on Tuesday, August 12 at the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs, New York, sponsored by Life Data Labs, and again that evening in downtown Saratoga, as part of the Hoofcare@Saratoga events. Standardbred shoer Conny Svensson from the Meadowlands and racetrack surfaces researcher Dr Mick Peterson will also be speaking on the 12th.

This week, the 5th, is a program from the Grayson Jockey Club Foundation's Shoeing Committee on shoe variation and surface variation with new high-speed videos from Mitch Taylor along with Steve Norman and Bill Casner, with a guest lecture from trainer/surface expert Michael Dickinson of Maryland.

Call the office at 978 281 3222 for more information, or email saratoga@hoofcare.com. I look forward to seeing you there...and thanks! to all the blog readers who came last week.

I think most of us would like to see Big Brown in Saratoga, too.

Thanks to Steve Sherack and IEAH for the nice photo of their horse, Big Brown.

Shoeing for the World: Two Tons of Horseshoes for Hong Kong

Two tons of horseshoes were ordered for the farrier clinic at the Olympic stabling center adjacent to Sha Tin Racecourse in Hong Kong. The shoes were primarily shipped from the warehouses at Mustad and Kerckhaert headquarters on the European continent. 

Head Olympics Farrier Ian Hughes of Wales said that the containers were filled this spring, and that he included "everything I could think of that anyone might need", including plenty of glue-on shoes and adhesive.

South Asia is not a remote outpost for farrier and vet supplies. Martin Draper's Tallahesse company is based in Singapore but has a branch in Hong Kong. He imports most of the farrier supplies used at the racetracks and in horse breeding and showing, including Victory, St. Croix, and Kerckhaert shoes.

Ian and two assistants will serve the horses at Hong Kong, along with the official "team" farriers dedicated to countries like Great Britain, Holland, Germany and the USA. In addition, the Hong Kong Jockey Club said that the 22 farriers at the racetrack are serving in a standby capacity.

The Legacy of A. Smith

Allen Smith, a farrier from Marion, Massachusetts died this afternoon. His friends will want to know, so I am posting the sad news here. He died at his home near Buzzards Bay.

Because he was such a private man, I'll leave it there. Most of us didn't even know he was sick until very recently. Those who know him understand.

But for those who didn't know him: Allen Smith was always a bit amused and intrigued by the ironic fact that his trade matched his name. He was "A Smith". And he was proud of it.

Back in the days when farriers were called horseshoers and drove trucks with smokestacksfor their coal forges sticking up into the air, Allen had the word "horseshoer" written in big letters on the side of the wooden "cap" on his truck.

I remember one night at a Southern New England Farriers Association meeting, someone asked him why he had the word painted so large, instead of his name. Allen didn't hesitate for a second. He answered that you could read it from a mile away and wherever he went, people would walk by his truck and make a comment or tell a story about how their grandfathers had shod horses, or something they remembered from a blacksmith shop in their towns growing up. 

In this way, Allen was a catalyst. He worked that same logic (or was it magic?) in many ways in his many roles in the farrier world, from shoeing my old horse Jasper (with concave, of course, that he imported as bar stock from England) on an island enclave off Cape Cod that he had to sail his boat to, to being the president (more than once) and peacemaker (perpetually) of the American Farrier's Association. He showed up at my house for a meeting one night on his motorcycle...but still wearing his trademark bow tie (from his "part-time" job as a professor of library science) under his leather jacket.

Allen may have wanted to leave this world privately, but it would be important to remember how strongly he believed that the proud traditions of farriery and smithing should be honored as long as any one of us remembers what a real blacksmith shop looked and smelled and sounded like. May our eyes and noses and ears never forget that combination.

Back in 1989, Allen sent me a poem written by the highly-regarded poet Edward Kleinschmidt called "Katzenjammer", in which the poet explained in lovely verbiage that in spite of the word "schmidt" in his last name, he was certainly not a smith, and that all the real smiths were dead anyway.

Allen objected. And wrote this poetic answer to Kleinschmidt: 

Smith y Gwf

And while you write, a smith

Tends fire, takes heat, and turns a shoe

To burn the balanced coffin horn

Among the bones of the limb,

Pacing the day, breaking steel

Across the anvil devil,

In back of behind.

--A. Smith

I believe there always be A. Smith among us, wherever horses are shod.