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Jumper training brothers Frank and John Madden never dreamed their wives, show jumper Stacia Madden, and Grand Prix rider, Beezie Madden, would come up with the perfect present for both brothers. The two women made an arrangement with renowned race car driver, Derek Daly, to have their husbands take a three-day driving course at Daly's race car school in Las Vegas. They announced the Yuletide surprise to their spouses who took advantage of it when they were in Nevada for the Show Jumping World Cup finals. "I used to race cars, but I am too busy with the horses now to do it," said Frank, a Massachusetts native who now runs his own show barn but keeps his Harley Davidson motorcycle on hand for occasional pleasure runs. "I loved spending time with my brother" who also raced cars off and on in his youth, said Frank. International High Performance Director of Reining at the U.S. Equestrian Team, Jamie Saults, remembers Dec. 25 as the time she got Lasso. An unregistered seven-year-old Quarter horse, the bay gelding and the preteen did everything together. They went out on trails, did horse shows, jumped, and on the hot days of summer, went swimming together. "He only cost $600, but he was priceless to me," she recalls. Their his-and-her gifts differ radically, but international four-in-hand combined driving competitor Jimmy Fairclough and his wife, Robin, a show jumper, who helps navigate for her husband in some shows, were happy with the presents. She has harbored a desire to have a "canary" diamond ring, so she dropped numerous hints to her husband. She even left business cards around for him to use to find the diamond, prized for its pale yellow hue. Finally, things clicked in the male mind and she got the ring. Her spouse, though, was ecstatic when he got a bulldozer. He uses his new "mechanical workhorse" on the family's northern New Jersey farm to build roads which can double as conditioning tracks for his teams of horses. When Hallie McEvoy and Thom, her future husband, were dating during their first holiday season together, he gave her a small tack trunk with a check inside for one month's board for her late horse, Pilar, plus a bunch of carrots for the mare. "That cemented our relationship," says McEvoy, an author, judge and press officer for various shows. "At that time, he knew so little about horses, but he understood how important Pilar was to me." When the couple was married, they held their ceremony in her barn where Pilar was the "Mare of Honor," continues McEvoy. Pilar wore their rings around her neck on a lace ribbon while McEvoy carried a bouquet of long-stem fresh carrots. Today, instead of giving each other Christmas gifts, McEvoy and her friends at their Vermont stable pool their money and make a donation to a horse charity in hopes "no horse will go hungry or go to slaughter in this country."
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