The Last Word
By MIKE ULMER -- Toronto Sun
NEWMARKET -- One million dollars.
No, that's not quite true. It was over a million, well over a million that they offered to Beth Underhill.
All she need do for a lifetime of financial security, was hand over her horse, Altair.
She said no, and it has not yet been written whether she was right, except in Beth Underhill's shopworn heart.
"You could say I gambled and lost," she said, a few minutes after racking up just four faults at the 2003 Tournament of Champions at the York Equestrian Centre aboard a young horse named Magdaline.
"But Altair gave me the finest season of my life and I wouldn't trade that for the money. If I was working at McDonald's now, I'd say the same thing."
Break a tennis racquet and you reach into the bag for another. Break a horse, and your career, your life, is shattered.
Altair turned an ankle two years ago at Spruce Meadows. He did not limp, and aside from a little extra give upon landing, there was no indication that a fuse had just been lit under Beth Underhill's career.
Altair had damaged a suspensory tendon. He went off the circuit for nearly a year, returned, slightly reinjured himself and is now the subject of daily walks, laser therapy, electro-magnetic therapy.
"Devastating, absolutely devastating," is how Underhill, a Canadian Olympian at the 1992 Games describes the past few years.
"There were nights without sleep, many nights without sleep. You don't realize until you are on another horse how talented Altair was and then you start asking yourself, should I change the way you ride to compensate. You have to be very strong not to let it chance your personality."
Horse and rider are words and music. Injure the mount and you wound the rider.
Understand, Underhill is luckier than most. She has ridden two premium jumpers, Monopoly, on whom she won two Canadian show jumping titles, and Altair, the 15-year-old bay Dutch Warmblood gelding who helped her to her third.
Altair was coming off his best season, a year in which the $250,000 Underhill had invested in him seemed a pittance. The million plus offer came in those heady days. "My brother said I was crazy to turn down a chance at lifetime financial security," Underhill said. "He couldn't understand it."
Altair will have been off a year when he returns to action in Florida this winter. Ask Underhill if she stands a good chance of occupying the one spot available for a Canadian jumper at the 2004 Olympics, and she goes back to her horse. No Altair, no Olympics.
That in turn, leads us back to the million bucks and a different kind of Indecent Proposal.
Would you give up the goal that had shaped you for a million bucks? What about your deepest core beliefs, the thing that got you up in the morning.
Beth Underhill is from Guelph. Her parents, Jack and Joan were determined to produce a well-rounded child. Beth rode, she sang, she played piano. Her musical talent thrilled Joan, who had herself dreamed of a career as an entertainer.
Real life, meeting Jack, moving from England to Canada with him, having kids, all those things came first and Joan, like so many women of her generation, put aside those girlish dreams.
But no dream dies without cost. "My Mom never stopped regretting what might have been, could have been, should have been," Underhill said.
Jack died too young of a heart attack. The kids eventually moved away. Joan, separated by an ocean from her home and a lifetime from her dreams, waited 20 years after Jack died, to the day, to kill herself.
That was three years ago, when her daughter was on top of the world on Altair. Beth had learned early from her mother. Nothing would ever detract from her focus. Remember the music lessons? Beth was good enough to earn top honours from the Royal Conservatory for her signing. One day, a teacher laid it out for her. She could be a great singer, or she could pursue the riding but she could not do both.
Beth chose riding and she never stopped choosing riding. She never had children, it would have constrained her career. She mourned her mother atop Altair.
"I swear, I really believe, that my Mom was with me all through that year. It was the most successful season of my career. It was like she was with me over every jump."
Then the roof caved in.
"I remember saying, Goddamit Mother, Couldn't you have stuck around a while longer?", Beth laughed.
Altair went down. Then Beth's marriage ended and in the cruelest twist imaginable, Beth Underhill found herself in an empty house with her dream snatched away.
Somehow, she had found a purgatory reminiscent of her mother's by choosing a path diametrically opposed to the one her mom had chosen.
She is still standing, Beth Underhill is. Altair is coming around. The Olympics remain a possibility.
"I'll survive," she says brandishing a pound a humor and not an ounce of self-pity. "If nothing else, I will survive."
