Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990 TAG: 9006220149
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB TEITLEBAUM SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
William "Fuzzy" Mayo, however, applies his knowledge to a different field. He builds jumps for horse shows and also designs the courses for the jump competition in horse shows around the nation.
This week, Mayo is plying his trade for the fourth year at the Roanoke Valley Horse Show. He has set up the courses with his jumps, and his biggest moment will come Saturday night at the Grand Prix, the climax to the week-long competition at the Salem Civic Center.
Mayo might have an easier life had he decided to construct buildings. "When I graduated, the job market wasn't very good," said the 1971 Vanderbilt alumnus. "I had a course in mechanical engineering, but for the last two years in school I was drawing jumps in my notebook.
"I had spent all my summers at horse shows being a groom. So I wasn't very hireable [as an engineer] anyway."
Whether he would have made more money as an engineer is speculative. Mayo won't divulge what people get paid for laying out courses, but he leads a busy life with the potential to be a financial success.
The Nashville, Tenn., native carts his jumps from show to show. He carefully measures the course between each type of competition, directing a crew on placing the obstacles.
There's more to it than that. The test of a good jumping competition is how well the person who lays out the course knows the horses and riders in the field. He can either make or break the competition.
For Bill Munford, the manager of the Roanoke Valley Horse Show, Mayo is the man he always calls.
"To me, a manager is no better than his staff, from the announcers to the people like Fuzzy. I don't have to follow behind them to know that they're doing their job," said Munford.
"I was managing a show in 1975 when I first saw Fuzzy. He's worked every show I've done since then. He sees what the horses are like and then sets the course. You don't want it to be too hard or too easy."
Mayo and Munford say that, in jumping competition, the most desirable result is to have 10-12 horses go through the first round clean, that is, with no penalties or faults for knocking down jumps. Then there is a timed runoff that is the most exciting part of jump competition. If there are too few or too many horses in the runoff - a trip over the course in which the horse and rider must negotiate the jumps cleanly and within an allotted time - then it is not considered a good show.
"Last night [Wednesday]we had 36 horses and it was the first time a lot of them had been to this show. Fuzzy set the course just right and had 10 finalists," Munford said. "One year [1986, when another designer set up the course] before I came here, no one went clean. There was no runoff. The crowd doesn't like that because they like a runoff."
Mayo came the next year and ever since there have been runoffs, much to the delight of Munford, the sponsors of the Roanoke Valley Horse Show and the crowd.
"I play it by ear," Mayo said in explaining how he plots a course. "I can be more technical by putting distances [between jumps] that alter the normal stride of the horses. You can make it more difficult by raising the jumps."
In Thursday night's $10,000 Open jumper stakes on Mayo's course, Mario Beslauriers took first on Asterix, James Young was second on Grande Donezec and Henri Prudent finished third on Make My Day.
Mayo said it is lucky for fans of the horse show that his older sister got a horse when he was 9 years old. "By the time she was 14, she was teaching riding and showing other people's horses. So I had access to horses all the time," said Mayo.
His nickname, Fuzzy, comes from the old comic sidekick in many Western grade B movies, Fuzzy Q. Jones.
"They started calling me that when I was five years old. I used to try to act like him," said Mayo, who at 40 could probably grow a beard, don some of the crazy western outfits that Jones wore, smack his lips as the comic did and come up with a good imitation.
Despite his nickname, Mayo is all business. He has to be because there is little time for anything else. He met his wife, a horse show manager, when she came to Nashville and started putting on shows. Suzanne Mayo has a law degree from the University of Tennessee, so one might wonder about her entry into the horse business, but that's another story.
There also is 4-year-old Christopher Mayo, who already is holding one end of the tape measure to help his father lay out the courses.
Mayo said he sets up 60 to 70 shows a year - mostly in the late spring, summer and early fall. When the Roanoke Valley Horse Show closes, he will load his equipment on his tractor-trailer and truck it to Oklahoma City in two days with a stop overnight in Nashville. The next week, he will head to Georgia.
So what does Mayo do in his spare time when he isn't laying out courses and traveling coast-to-coast? He manufactures and sells jump equipment, quite successfully.
"I've seen him come to shows with his equipment and leave without any of it," Munford said in describing how fast Mayo's wares sell.
Mayo has opened branches in Fort Worth, Texas, and Carmel, Calif.
In Nashville, his company has four full-time employees, and he hires part-time workers for the winter when they manufacture most of the equipment to be sold at summer shows.
It's a hectic life - the driving, running a business and laying out the courses. "I get tired," Mayo said. "But it doesn't take me but a couple of days to recuperate. Then I'm ready to go back to work."
by CNB