For older county folks, last week’s Olympics news concerning San Diego brought back memories from nearly 44 years ago when 50,000 residents jammed into the San Dieguito River valley to watch the 1984 Olympic equestrian speed and endurance event.
That August 2nd marked the first-ever Olympic event in San Diego, as part of the 1984 Los Angeles Games. The day engendered much enthusiasm over a spectator sport largely unknown to Americans despite being the second most-popular in Europe.
It’s only fitting, then, that in summer 2028 Snapdragon Stadium will host the continent’s most popular game — now also well-entrenched in the U.S. — with several preliminary soccer matches for the 2028 L.A. Olympics.
The San Dieguito River bottom was a perfect locale for the 1984 event, the land having been cleared for the future Fairbanks Ranch Country Club. In addition, nearby Rancho Santa Fe offered needed volunteer assistance with hundreds of enthusiasts, owing to the community’s longstanding equestrian culture with specialty shops and riding clubs serving the nearly 80% of residents who owned horses.
Olympic officials brought in Neil Ayer, an East Coast horseman familiar with the sport, to design the course beginning in February 1984. He labeled the event the “motocross” of horses. It put competitors and their mounts through a grueling timed marathon, consisting of an early-morning flat run of 2.5 miles, a 2-mile steeplechase, a second flat run of 7.5 miles and a final 4.5 mile cross-country run with 34 obstacles.
To give the course a bit of American flavor, Ayer included one obstacle in the Z shape from the movie The Mark of Zorro and a second shaped as a miniature Old West town facade, where horses rode through the front of a saloon and over feed bags.
Crowds began gathering as early as 5:45 a.m., parking in temporary dirt lots as far as two miles from the course, but almost everyone good-naturedly accepted the hike as shuttle buses were in short supply. T-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes were the order of the day, befitting the seasonably warm but not oppressive heat. A cooling sea breeze off the nearby Pacific assisted, given that the course was nearly treeless.
It was also an era where security checks were few and far between, even with Prince Philip and Princess Anne of England in attendance at the newly built Fairbanks Ranch clubhouse. The only kerfuffle came when a man insisted he had permission to bring his Doberman pinscher onto the course. The hundreds of plainclothes officers mingling in the crowd reported no significant problems, other than a woman needing an ambulance to Sharp Hospital after she went into labor.
While some San Diegans knew the intricacies of the event, most were content to bask in the sun and take in their only chance to watch an Olympic event in person. British competitor Virginia Holgate became a crowd favorite after spectators learned that her uncle was standing against the low green-bunting fence adjacent to the series of steeplechase water jumps.
“Go Virginia Go!” they screamed as uncle Jack Rice snapped away with his camera. He chuckled at the boisterous crowd, appreciative despite their lack of experience at such competitions. “It’s a great tribute to the international spirit that the Olympics can bring,” he said.
Here’s hoping that a similar spirit prevails in 2028 and brings good memories to a new generation as did the equestrian event in 1984.
David Smollar is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer. He lives in Tierrasanta.
