1. 23NYHorseMag.com NEW YORK HORSE
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B Y L . A . P O M E R O Y
Up For Discussion was a gift. The Thoroughbred – aka
Jerry – was bred for racing. But as the recipient of this gift
horse confirmed, Jerry wasn’t exactly built for speed.
“He couldn’t outrun me,” Jennifer Dahlman Gurney recalled. Going
nowhere fast where racetracks were concerned, Jerry was a good horse
in need of a new start. Gurney needed something, too: “We needed
to build another barn and in order to do that, we needed money, so
I figured I’d better start showing Jerry to try and get him sold.”
And with that, she stepped – jumped, rather – into the family legacy.
Again&Time
JENNIFER GURNEY CHOSE CENTRAL NEW YORK
TO WRITE THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE STORY
BEGUN BY HARRY AND SNOWMAN.
… There was something about this horse. Harry turned back and the
horse was still watching him intently; he was wise, an old soul,
a horse whose steady demeanor seemed to cover hidden depths.
Man or beast, Harry did not like to see a proud soul held in captivity.
‘Might make a lesson horse if we can fatten him up,’ Harry said.
He handed over the eighty dollars and never looked back.
From “The 80-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation” by Elizabeth Letts
ARCHIVE PHOTO COURTESY OF
THE EQUUS FILM FESTIVAL NYC

2. 24 NYHorseMag.comNEW YORK HORSE 25NYHorseMag.com NEW YORK HORSE
F
or the better part of two decades, Gurney’s
name was firmly linked with the training
and management of young Thoroughbreds
at racetracks in New York state and
beyond. Now, she’s returned to the hunter/
jumper rings where she started, launching the
next evolution of her Green Acres stable in East
Syracuse, contributing both to the renaissance of the
American Thoroughbred as show horse and – much
like her legendary stepfather Harry deLeyer– to
second careers for horses given up for naught.
DeLeyer’s story – told and retold in three best
sellers and now a documentary – is one of belief
and redemption. Half a century ago, he paid
$80 for a horse bound for slaughter, named him
Snowman and forged him into a national show-
jumping champion. One chance encounter at a
Pennsylvania auction saved two souls that day
and crafted a friendship that lasted a lifetime.
“Snowman had taught him this lesson
so many years ago. No obstacle is too great
to overcome for a man with a dream.”
— The Eighty-Dollar Champion
“I was solely in the Thoroughbred business
for about 24 years. I grew up riding and showing
nonstop,” says Gurney, 48. Her first pony was
a little Welsh named Flicka. “I remember Flicka
best as a dedicated stopper. My stepdad had to
school her prior to shows to convince her to
jump a round. That usually lasted for about three
classes before she went back to refusing the first
jump, and I’d have to leave the ring crying.
“… She taught me, first and foremost, to
have fun with your animal and to enjoy each
one as an individual. She was an extremely
average pony, but to me she was my world and
friend. I spent every waking hour with her.”
Spending every waking hour with horses: It was
a foundation of the work ethic DeLeyer instilled.
“He was up without an alarm and at ‘em
every day,” Gurney remembers. “He worked
until the work was done, then worked a little
more. I hated it as a teenager but it stuck with
me. My first track job? It was 11 months before
my first day off. Horse racing and showing are
games of inches. Miss a day, miss a lot.”
But deLeyer never let the pressure translate to
the horses. She recalls a gentle, relaxed image of him
at the kitchen table, savoring the stack of bacon,
homemade bread and eggs sunny-side up her mother
would make each morning. “She’d have to find
him in the barn to get him his lunch, and bring him
home for dinner, but he never hurried breakfast.”
After breakfast, the real day began.
“Harry always believed riding should be fun,”
or at least adrenaline-surging, says Gurney. She tells
how he made her take an off-track Thoroughbred
over a cross-country course he’d made. It included
a 4-foot fence up a bank, to a second 4-foot fence,
with an 8-foot jump down the other side.
“I can’t do that,” she told him.
“Yump,” he replied, in his heavy Dutch
accent. “Yust kick him in dah belly.”
It was a trademark move, Gurney says: “Harry
... He’d feed you into combinations that looked
like an easy 2-foot coming in and would be 6-foot
jumping out, with a 4-foot bar in the middle. It was
almost a high, to challenge yourself like that.”
“Horses are just like people: Each one
has some hidden potential. What it takes
to bring out the best in a horse, or in
anyone, is to believe in him 100 percent.”
— Harry deLeyer
At Penn State University, Gurney was captain of
the equestrian team. She graduated in 1989 with a
degree in elementary education and teaching, but
confessed to growing bored with youngsters of the
two-legged, human variety. So she returned to New
York, where her father was buying racehorses and
succumbed to the siren song of the horse business.
WIN THIS
New York Horse
has a copy of
“The Eighty-Dollar
Champion” to give
away. To enter,
send an email with
your name and
address to Editor@
nyhorsemag.com
and put “Book” in the
subject line. Entries
must be received
by Sept. 30. We will
draw one winner at
random from all the
entries received.
Jennifer Dahlman
competing in the 2015
Derby at Genesee Country
Village and Museum.
EMILYRIDEN/PHELPSMEDIAGROUP
Jennifer Gurney
unsaddles one of
her top hunters,
15-year-old Gianni,
after competing
at the state
Fairgrounds.
GLORIAWRIGHTPHOTO

3. 26 NEW YORK HORSE 27NEW YORK HORSE
“I drove back to New York and got a job
on the racetrack as a hot walker, making
$175 a week, working seven days a week, 12
hours a day,” Gurney recalled. She worked her
way up to groom and then assistant trainer,
working for Mike Hushion, respected as one
of New York’s top Thoroughbred trainers
One of Hushion’s owners was Barry K.
Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of Calvin
Klein Inc., and former chairman and CEO of the
New York Racing Association. Schwartz and wife,
Sheryl, had purchased the largest privately-owned
property in Westchester County and proceeded,
as an Architectural Digest profile described,
“to dedicate the farm to the glory of horses,”
including breeding and racing Thoroughbreds.
Enter Gurney.
“Stonewall was an amazing run,” Gurney
says of her 10-year tenure as trainer at the farm.
“It was 760 acres, 45 minutes from New York
City, and I had a boss who said, ‘Do whatever
the horses need.’ I had a staff of 25 and was
responsible for everything from delivering the
babies and breaking the yearlings to making hay
and planting the flowers that decorated the farm.”
It was a different sort of baby that convinced her
the time had come to move on: “After my second
daughter was born at Stonewall I decided to buy
my own farm, to spend more time with my kids.”
She named the farm Green Acres, after her
broodmare, Greening, wanting it to become –
with a nod to the 1960s TV sit-com and theme
song – “the place to be.” Thanks to Jerry’s
second career, Green Acres found its place.
The racetrack washout Barry Schwartz gave
her “sold quite well,” Gurney said. “We built
the barn and it snowballed from there.”
Since then, Gurney has been no stranger
to victory gallops at major shows, including
wins on The Other Brother at Devon and
Harrisburg, and a Zone 2 year-end title,
winning the championship by 800 points more
than the second-place horse and rider.
Another top hunter, Gianni, competed at the
National Horse show in Lexington in 2014 and The
Other Brother “got good ribbons there in 2012,”
Gurney says, casually adding details of an accident
that injured her neck badly enough to need surgery.
She had a plate and screws inserted into her
neck in September 2013, sitting out the National
Horse Show, even though both horses qualified.
“Harry taught me to ride with no fear,” she
says, but credits top trainer Gary Duffy of Ithaca
with the fine-tuning. One of his lessons was how
to improve her arc over fences, and Gurney shares
the secret: saying “whoa” while over the fence and
again on the landing side. “It makes a horse pause
for a split second, and that creates a nicer arc.”
“The big gray is long gone, but living on
is the memory of the horse who was yoked
to a plow yet wanted to soar. Snowman and
Harry showed the world how extraordinary
the most ordinary among us can be.”
— The Eighty-Dollar Champion
Success, Gurney believes, is a recipe whose
best ingredients include joy and camaraderie,
and building Green Acres, she says, is the
sum total of a team’s contributions.
Over the summer, she made the leap to a new
facility in East Syracuse and once again, there
was a horse story to go with it. This time, it was a
homebred Gurney foaled and raised out of Greening.
A horse that raced under a name that proved more
intimidating than his record: Green Monster.
“They don’t come any better looking. But he
was too big and a goofball. When the starting gate
opened, he just stood there like he was saying,
‘Huh?’” she says of the now 8-year-old gelding, who
made his racing debut at Gulfstream in March 2010.
“I think he went through eight different trainers.
But as soon as I saw him, I was pretty excited.”
By then, he’d figured out his job as a racehorse.
But after winning his next outing, Green Monster
came up injured. Gurney was there with a second
chance, ready to transform another off-track
Thoroughbred into a solid working citizen.
“She takes horses that don’t work out and
finds them new homes,” said Dr. Jerry Bilinski,
a North Chatham veterinarian who sits on the
Board of Directors of the Thoroughbred Retirement
Foundation. “She does it more professionally
than most, operates a very attractive facility, and
I would highly recommend her to anyone.”
Green Monster took a month off when he first
arrived to put on some weight and wind down,
and then it was time to start working. In mid-
July he took his first show-ring baby steps at the
Huck Finn Classic in Syracuse. “There was a show
announcer, and other horses cantering in the warm
up rings, and even some big trucks, and he didn’t
miss a beat,” Gurney says. “He was fabulous.”
She expects once things are settled, she’ll
be back in the ring with the Green Acres string,
adding a few lines to Green Monster’s résumé.
“I come pretty close to being offended, when
someone says I rescue Thoroughbreds,” Gurney
adds. “These aren’t horses from kill pens or
auctions. I get horses that just can’t race anymore
because of injury, or they’re not good enough,
or have lost interest. Horses come here sound,
well cared for and up-to-date on vaccinations.
“These are horses in incredible condition.
They just need to find a new job.”
Jerry is also back home at Green Acres, enjoying
semi-retirement in his new role as a lightly-
ridden lesson and show horse. And as Gurney
and Green Acres continues the family legacy of
starting good horses on great careers, she promises
this: “Jerry will be with us until the end.”
HARRY & SNOWMAN AT
THE EQUUS FILM FESTIVAL NYC
In 1956, Dutch immigrant Harry deLeyer rescued
a broken-down Amish plow horse from a
slaughter truck, paying $80 for the gentle-eyed
gray gelding and naming him Snowman.
In less than two years, Harry and Snowman won
the ultimate indoor show jumping hat trick: the
top titles at the National Horse Show at Madison
Square Garden, Pennsylvania National, and
Washington International, beating the nation’s
purebreds and gaining instant celebrity status.
Snowman had his own fan club, was twice profiled
in Life magazine, and was the subject of three
best-selling books, including the 2011 NY Times
best seller, The Eighty-Dollar Champion. Snowman
retired from competition in 1962 to Harry’s farm on
Long Island, where he died in 1974. In 1992, he was
inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame.
Harry, now in his 80s, and the deLeyer family share
their story in a new documentary, Harry & Snowman,
screening Nov. 20-22, at the Equus Film Festival
NYC, at the Village East Cinema in Manhattan. Learn
more at: facebook.com/EquusFilmFestivalNYC.
ARCHIVEPHOTOCOURTESYOFTHEEQUUSFILMFESTIVALNYC
Less than two years
after being saved from
slaughter, Snowman, the
former Amish plow horse,
won the 1958 show
jumping Triple Crown.