what horse was harvey smith riding when he was disqualified in 1971?

Answer 1

found this article which will explain all to you
Do you remember when…

... Harvey Smith made his famous two-fingered gesture?

Oliver Irish
Sunday September 3, 2000


In the Sixties and Seventies showjumping was a genuinely popular sport and Harvey Smith was its main man, its star attraction - he even had a Sun column, the best yardstick of a sport's populist cachet. In 1971 Smith attempted to become the first rider to win successive Hickstead Derbys.

The day of the competition started badly for Harv. He forgot to bring the Derby cup with him to Sussex. No one had asked him to, he said bluntly (it was promptly put on a train, arriving just in time for the competition) - the 'no one' referred implicitly to Douglas Bunn, Hickstead's owner and vice-president of the British Show Jumping Association, a man with whom Smith had never seen eye to eye.

Fired up at his perceived shabby treatment, Smith, whose bluff manner contrasted starkly with the reserved bureaucracy of the sport's governors, duly rode Mattie Brown to victory.

What immediately followed - two fingers thrust briefly and vigorously skywards, roughly in the judges' direction - started a chain of events that fascinated the media and the public.

Smith, who left the trophy at Hickstead for engraving, drove back to his Yorkshire home that night. While he was on the road, a telegram, signed by Bunn, was winging its way to Smith's home, telling him that he had been disqualified because of a 'disgusting' gesture.

A man on his way to milk his cows broke the news to Smith before he saw the telegram. 'I was fair knocked down for a minute,' said Harv at the time. Not only had he been denied the trophy, but also the then world-record prize of £2,000.

Smith protested without contrition. 'It was a straightforward V for victory,' he said. 'Churchill used it throughout the war.'

He stuck manfully to this defence as he battled to be reinstated. Indeed, when Smith later defended himself before the stewards of the BSJA, he turned up with a huge file containing photographs of Churchill proffering V-signs as Smith had done at Hickstead.

Smith was, of course, reinstated - an inevitable decision by the BSJA, who knew they were fighting an unwinnable battle against a man who had the public's backing - and the euphemism 'to give a Harvey Smith' was born.

Answer 2

Mattie Brown

Answer 3

I wasn't able to come up with much, but I found an original video clip of the actual event. Cheers!


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