Elizabeth Letts

Traces the mid-20th-century story of the champion equine jumper and the Dutch farmer who rescued him from the slaughterhouse, recounting how the farmer discovered Snowman's jumping talents and trained him to compete against the world's most expensive thoroughbreds.

Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation

The Eighty-dollar Champion

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The dramatic and inspiring story of a man and his horse, an unlikely duo whose rise to stardom in the sport of show jumping captivated the nation Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a truck bound for the slaughterhouse. The recent Dutch immigrant recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up nag and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, he ultimately taught Snowman how to fly. Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping. Their story captured the heart of Cold War–era America—a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. They were the longest of all longshots—and their win was the stuff of legend.

Snowman, The Horse That Inspired a Nation

The Eighty-Dollar Champion

The story of the horse that inspired a nation, failed to inspire me. I have to say, I am extremely disappointed in this book. The author doesn't seem to have enough information to write a detailed account of Snowman and his owner, so she decided to throw in random biographies of side characters and other side stories that were simply taking up space. I personally ended up skimming much of the book after giving up on searching for Snowman's story. I simply hated the book by the end of it, and the stubborn idea of finishing it drove me to the end.

I have a feeling that the deal to make a movie never amounted to anything for the same reason this book failed- there simply isn't a huge amount of detail that is associated with the story. We all know how it ends, and the beginning is simple. Unless we were to read about every single training session and every little painstaking detail about the competitions, this story really isn't going to have many pages of content. The horse parts were portrayed accurately, but the entire story could have been told in a mere hundred pages, and not pulled over the 200 plus that the book ended up having. I don't feel this book was worth the money I spent to buy it, and I feel that it could have been better adapted in a compilation of stories about other worthy show jumpers for this time period, rather than dedicating an entire book littered with random content to Snowman. He was a great horse, and I don't feel this book did his story justice.

Traces the story of a champion equine jumper and the Dutch farmer who rescued him from the slaughterhouse, recounting how the farmer discovered Snowman's jumping talents and trained him to compete against the world's thoroughbreds.

Judy Hudgins

For the Nonfiction Book Group at the library, I needed a book with an animal theme. I picked something with horses and loved the story. Maybe a bit more facts on horses and the decline after WWII, but a good read about a man who understood the horse. And a man who understood that sometimes friendship and trust is more important than the dollar.

The Eighty-dollar Champion Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation

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