INTERNATIONAL HORSE SHOW
CAPTAIN BIZARD HAS PROUD RECORD. The International Horse Show at Olympia may not have the same public appeal as some of the more widely followed sports, but it has its own thousands of faithful followers and its own idols of the ring. Olympia has its own “Borotra,” in the French officer Captain X. Bizard. and though he wears a monicle instead of a beret, he is as popular with the fans as ever the “Bounding Basque" was at Wimbledon.
Captain Bizard has been riding at Olympia for 15 years, and it is estimated that from first to last he must have jumped more than 3,000 obstacles in the famous arena. One of the most popular four-footed veterans at the show is the 20-year-old Derek, ridden by Captain Friedberger, of the Royal Horse Artillery. To the great disappointment of his admirers he just failed to win the Connaught Challenge Cup for the third year in succession and so make the trophy his own.
A pleasant feature of the show this year was the return, after 16 years’ absence, of a team of Italian army officers with their beautiful and wellschooled horses. Lieutenant-colonel Bettoni won the King George V Gold Cup on a fine chestnut named Adigrat; but it was Major Filipponni’s Nasello Italico, a 17-year-old grey, that most captured the imagination of the crowd. Before he became one of the finest show jumpers in the Italian army old Nasello was a “vanner.” Like many stars of the equine world he has .a temperament. He gets tremendously excited when waiting to go into the ring. An amusing way was found at Olympia to cool him down. In the spectacle “Piccadilly Fifty Years Ago” an old manual fire engine was shown. It stood by the saddling enclosure when not in use, and when Nasello’s temperament got the better of him Major Filipponni walked his old horse across to the fire engine and stood it beside the pole. Nasello’s old brain took him back to the days he had spent many weary hours between the shafts. Thereafter he behaved as a well-man-nered cart horse should.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1939, Page 9
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354INTERNATIONAL HORSE SHOW Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1939, Page 9
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