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A 50-Year High: Robin Hahn
by Karen Robinson | Horse Sport November 2009One of Canada’s true pioneers of three-day eventing, Robin Hahn is a multiple Olympian and Pan American Games team member. He was the highest placed Canadian at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, finishing ninth individually on Taffy. He has dedicated his life to the pursuit of the highest reaches of excellence, whether it is as a rider, teacher, trainer, volunteer or event organizer. A Level III eventing coach, he helped to create what has become Canada’s coaching certification program. Now 76, Robin continues to mentor event riders; he has also returned to the discipline of his youth, competing with The Congressman in Grand Prix show jumping in 2009. He is currently writing a book titled Gymnastic Jumping. Robin and his wife, Kelly Law, live with three dogs and numerous horses at their farm, onghouse, in Lumby, B.C.
Although Robin Hahn competed in three Olympic Games, the most enduring and powerful Olympic memory for him was from the 1956 Stockholm Olympics – where he was a groom, rather than a rider. “In the ’50s we used to have big indoor shows in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta,” he said. Held in hockey rinks, the shows were closely modeled on the Royal Winter Fair, and drew not only top class competitors from the region, but also thousands of spectators.
In 1955, Robin won both the hunter and jumper championships on his mare Colette at back-to-back shows in Saskatoon and Regina, both of which were judged by Denny Fuller. “We always had a big party on the last evening of the show, and at the party in Regina, Denny asked me if I would beinterested in trying out for the Olympic Team.”
Robin had never jumped a cross-country fence, but it was for the eventing team that he was invited to try out. “I was flabbergasted, but told her I would certainly love to come and try out for the team.”
In the winter of 1956, Robin and Colette made their way to Ontario to join the riders who would ultimately compose the bronze medal winning Canadian eventing team in Stockholm. “Most of the fellows had not done much – a little bit of fox hunting and cross-country. That was the very beginning of eventing in Canada.”
Ironically, the sponsorship that seems so thin on the ground nowadays was plentiful back then. Larry McGuiness of McGuinness Distillers was not only an Olympian himself; he supported the sport both financially and through the ownership of several horses. When Robin arrived in the east, Larry gave him a job so that he could support himself. “I would work at the distillery during the day, and go out and ride every evening,” said Robin. Larry was sufficiently impressed with Robin’s dedication and ability that after a month and a half, he gave him leave from his job at the distillery so that he could focus full-time on training to be on the team.
Colette, an ex-RCMP horse that Robin’s father had bought from the RCMP in 1950, was an inexperienced cross-country horse, but a great jumper with an equal dose of courage. Robin recalled the first time he pointed Colette at an Irish Bank on the McGuinness farm. “She and I had never jumped one before, and had no idea how to do it. She tried to jump the whole thing and winded herself pretty badly hitting the top of the bank. I had to wait a bit while she recovered before jumping off the bank, but she learned quickly. The next time, she touched down with her feet at the top.” Robin believes that some of those early trial-and-error experiences influenced his interest in explaining how to do things correctly to his own students.
Shortly before departing for England to continue their spring training and to get some competition miles, Colette was injured. Robin would not be going to his first Olympics that year as a rider, but he would be part of the team after all. “I was invited to go as an assistant to the coach, to groom and assist the team vet,” said Robin. The trip would result in the greatest inspiration of his riding career, and it began with momentous events even before the team arrived in England. “We flew with the horses in a two engine prop plane. It was my first flight ever.”
Robin’s experience in England and then Stockholm left him with a powerful sense of wonder at how he was included in everything as if he were a team rider. “I lived with the horses and the riders lived in a hotel, but I was invited to all functions. I was presented to the Queen, and while living at Badminton I met the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, having breakfast with them on occasion. I was overwhelmed with the quality of people willing to be extremely nice to me, someone who I thought of as just a farmer, and not important.”
Of his many fond memories from that spring and summer of 1956, Robin cherishes one that he believes represents what the Olympics are about. “A young groom from Egypt was watching me groom a horse. We had no language in common and couldn’t communicate by words, but he expressed somehow that he would like to borrow some brushes. He didn’t have the kind of brushes we had.” Robin’s fellow grooms told him he was crazy when he lent the Egyptian a set of grooming tools, saying that he would surely never see them again. “He used the tools, then washed them and returned them to me, then would come and get them from me the next morning, and return them clean at the end of each day.”
Even five decades later, Robin speaks with emotion when he remembers the day everyone was heading home. The Egyptian groom brought the brushes back for the final time. Robin tried to give them to him, but “he wouldn’t take them. He cried, he bowed, and we hugged. It was quite an experience that we couldn’t speak to each other, but we became friends – and he appreciated something so simple. Robin learned that sometimes a person’s name is lost to time, but the memories that form one’s Olympic experience are filled with special human moments; he also discovered that people around the world, when brought together by horses, have much in common.
Watching his teammates stand on the podium with bronze medals around their necks was a powerful inspiration for Robin to pursue his own Olympic dreams at future Games. “It was such an emotional time to watch them win the medal, and to hear the anthem of the gold medalist British team, which was at that time the same anthem as ours. At that moment I knew I wanted to ride in the Olympics for Canada. That was the point that made me desperately want horses and riding to be part of my life forever.”
Robin went on to compete in Mexico 1968, Munich 1972 and Montreal in 1976, but “I really consider the one where I didn’t ride the most outstanding in starting my career. The Olympics get in your blood and you can’t get them out – or want to get them out.”
A team that works well together becomes a kind of family, and the friendships can last a lifetime. For Robin Hahn, the people are as important as the sport itself, and are inseparable from the Olympic experience.
