Kevin Babington: “I don’t want people feeling sorry for me”

I remember everything about the day of the fall.

It was Hampton Classic week. I had two horses in the Grand Prix qualifier. Shorapur had won the Hampton Grand Prix three years prior. Super Chilled I was just moving up to the four star level. Both horses were on a really good roll.

When I came out of the class on Super Chilled I said to my groom, “I wonder if I should just plan on jumping him in the Grand Prix?” Shorapur didn’t feel herself in the other class she did that week. But then I thought, Ah, I’ve won it on her before and she was actually quite difficult then early in the week. l’ll make a decision after I’ve jumped both of them.

The warm up went really well.

The first line of the course was down the hill towards the ingate, oxer–vertical. It was eight strides. And then you had a difficult rollback to a big oxer, and it was eight forward strides to a combination—oxer, vertical, vertical. I watched a couple of horses in front of me and the two stride looked really, really short. So I wanted to get a good oxer in to get as close as I could to the vertical so I’d land shallow and have room for the two strides.

That was the plan anyway.

I’m not sure if Shorapur hung up over the oxer in the combination or if it was the shadows, but when I landed from the vertical and I sat up, she just picked up in one stride.

I remember both of us going down. Then I hit the ground—I remember that clear as day.

I’d had plenty of falls, and normally I’d jump up. It’d take a lot to keep me down.

But when I tried to move my legs, I realized I couldn’t. The paramedics came in and I said, “Don’t move me, something’s not right.” All I remember is it felt like my arms were stuck in the air. They weren’t, but I kept asking, “Can you push my arms down? Can you push my arms down?”

Missy Clark and John Brennan came running into the ring. My groom passed the other horse off to somebody and she came in. A couple of good friends, Colm McGuckian and Michael Winters, came in. I said “Guys, I don’t think this is good.”

Normally I’d be very positive.

I was medevacked out of the ring and as the medics were loading me into the helicopter, they were in a rush and hit my nose on the thing. I remember saying to myself, You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me. It’s funny what your mind holds on to in those moments.

But the whole time I’m thinking they’ll get it sorted out. I was hoping my body had just gone into shock or something like that.

****

To really tell this story we have to rewind a minute. To Tipperary County, Ireland. 1968.

I’m the youngest of 11. There’s a 20-year gap between my eldest sister and myself and a five-year difference between myself and Siobhán, the second youngest. Like my mom was 42 when she had me and my dad was quite a bit older than my mom, so I definitely wasn’t in the plans.

But it was a beautiful upbringing. We were a very close family, and for Irish people, I think we were very affectionate.

None of my siblings were into horses when I started. A lad I went to school with mentioned something about riding lessons and I tagged along to watch. I think I was nine at the time. I fell in love overnight.

It was around that same time I watched a donkey derby—it’s this chaotic kind of race with kids on donkeys. They looked like a blast! So I bought a donkey. Fred. It shows you how little I knew. He was three years old, right? He was still a stud. I bought him for 10 pounds.

We walked that donkey from the other side of town to our farm. It took forever. It took us about an hour to get it across the bridge. And when we got to this parking lot area, it would not lead. I had to leave the poor donkey in the back of a friend’s hotel overnight until my brother could come with a trailer the next day.

The next morning I had everybody including the drunks in town giving their two cents on how to load this donkey. We ended up carrying it on.

I kept it on a few acres my brother had.

I would get on Fred and I would boot him over crossrails. He would grab the bit and take off and try to run me into the shed, so I’d have to bail out. Then I used these 55-gallon drums and put wood across to stop him from running into the shed. He’d get there and he’d duck his head and run under it and I’d have to bail. He was trying to kill me at every point.

I probably had him for six months before I advertised him for 15 pounds, the little dealer in my blood. The farmer and I went back and forth. He shook hands on 12 pounds. I think my mother gave him 12 pounds to take it away. I honestly do. But I took that money and I bought a riding helmet.

****

I was 19 when I came to America.

I knew after I finished high school that I wanted to make a career out of horses. I didn’t think I could do it show jumping or eventing so I applied to do a stud and stable husbandry course in the Irish National Stud, thinking I’d get a job working at like Coolmore Stud. I ended up taking the British Horse Society Assistant Instructor course, which is all about riding instruction. It was brilliant. I discovered I had a knack for teaching.

One afternoon we were all called in for a meeting. This lady was recruiting for a summer camp in Colchester, Vermont. She needed one riding instructor and one barn manager and I had no intention of going.

None of us did. She’s telling us all about it, and nobody’s putting their hand up for interest.

“Boys,” she said, “it’s an all-girl summer camp. There’s gonna be 250 girls and there’s very few boys there.”

So, I look over at John Brennan and he looks back at me and we both put our hands up in the air. That’s how I ended up coming to America, with no intention of staying.

****

At 21, I got a notion to start my own business. I spent two and a half years working for Frank Chapot and had been dating Dianna, my later wife, for six months. She just was as passionate about horses as I was and she wanted to see Gem Twist. I think that was how I was able to hook her in.

We rented a barn in Ringoes, New Jersey and started off teaching till 10 o’clock at night.

I used to buy inexpensive horses and produce them and I’d end up having to use them in lessons. I couldn’t afford to have lesson horses and sale horses. It was the best thing ever because it really was a good test to see how the horses managed with amateurs and luckily enough most of the riders that I attracted were advanced enough.

Dianna and I ran the whole thing together ourselves.

We started to accumulate more and more horses on training and a lot of freelance teaching. We ended up buying this horse called Tornado that really brought me up through the ranks. In ’95, we were National Grand Prix Horse of the Year. It was very fast riding, right? It was competitive. So that kind of got me off the ground.

Then Sally Glassman—she had started to ship in a couple of horses every week—bought Cruise Missile and we’d share him. That horse was an absolute winner. I started him at 1.20ms, and he ended up being just a super Grand Prix horse.

She mentioned that if another horse comes along like that, she’d be interested. Wouldn’t you know, Eamonn Hughes—he had found me Cruise Missile—tipped me off about this amazing horse in Ireland that he had tried as a five-year-old and just came on the market.

I went on a Monday and tried him. I had never experienced scope like it. But he was strong, he was very strong. So I said to Sally, “Look, I love the horse. He’s got all the scope, all the ability. I think he’s definitely gonna be a Grand Prix horse. For some reason, if he doesn’t work out, we’d sell him.”

That was Carling King.

Sally rode him for a while. He was just very, very strong, so I started riding him more and more and we started to figure out, God, this is a serious horse.