The Eighty-Dollar Champion: The True Story of a Horse, a Man, and an Unstoppable Dream

On a bleak winter afternoon, Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. Noting a spark in the horse’s eye, the Dutch immigrant bought the beaten-up animal for only eighty dollars and took him to the family’s modest farm on Long Island.



Though Snowman thrived in his new home, Harry needed money. Reluctantly, he sold Snowman to another farm a few miles down the road. But the shaggy horse had other ideas.



When he turned up back at Harry’s barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. Snowman then began his extraordinary path to stardom as Harry trained him to show jump, taking Snowman all the way to the very top of the sport.



This dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo is based on the insight and recollections of the Flying Dutchman himself. Snowman and Harry’s story captured the heart of Cold War-era America—a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. Elizabeth Letts’s message is simple: Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.