Photo: Chris Jordan and his father, Scott. Photo Courtesy of the Jordan Family.
Chris Jordan said he was maybe 2 or 3 years old at the time, in daycare in Forest Hills, still exploring the enormous world around him, still mesmerized by what the 17-year-old would probably consider mundane these days.
It was at this age, he has been told time and again, that his blue eyes first locked on to the site of a horse—and never let go.
Jordan said he would stare out of the windows of the daycare facility at the majestic beasts plodding along or just grazing at Lynne’s Riding Center.
“My parents said I’ve always liked horses, that I used to watch them on TV,” said Jordan, seated at the dining room table in his Ozone Park home, winter’s last gasp falling in the form of extra-large snowflakes outside. He was 3 when he sat in a saddle for the first time.
“They told me, ‘Do good in school, you’ll ride horses,’’ Jordan recalled. “I’ve been riding ever since.”
One of his first stops was at the stalls at Jamaica Bay Riding Academy Inc., where Jordan still hones his horse-jumping skills with the Metropolitan Equestrian Team under the Interscholastic Equestrian Association.
But Jordan’s heart is in the sport of kings.
He said he prefers polo to jumping, mostly because the international team game that’s played on horseback stokes the fires of natural competition.
“Polo is a true sport—you’ve got to get the ball in the goal,” Jordan noted. “There’s nothing like it in the world—seven and a half minutes of pure adrenaline.”
Jordan said he was first exposed to the game about three or four years ago, while he was at a jumping event. Within a year, he was hooked.
“I told my coach, ‘I want to do this,’” Jordan said. “’I want to go to college and play this.’”
And he has excelled. Jordan has competed in tournaments and matches all over the country with his Country Farms Polo Club team, including Rhode Island, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Ithaca, and even galloped across the border into Toronto.
The junior at Christ the King Regional High School hopes to earn a college scholarship through polo, major in business and one day open his own horse facility.
“But I definitely want to be a professional polo player,” Jordan said with a laugh.
Jordan’s parents said they couldn’t be prouder of him. His father, Scott, related how equestrian sports have shaped Chris Jordan the person.
“It’s made him a well-rounded young man,” Scott said. “Christopher has been an absolute delight and an inspiration to us. From a young age, he had a love for animals and that hasn’t changed.”
And it’s obvious, even after chatting with him for just a few minutes, that Chris Jordan’s passion for horses hasn’t declined since those diaper days, when he would catch a glimpse of a beautiful bronco on the other side of a window in Forest Hills, and be captivated.
“It’s fascinating,” Jordan noted, “that a human being could do something so great with an animal.”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
