When I was gathering photos for my article about Winter Place Farm, which appears in the Winter edition of The Chronicle of the Horse Untacked, this one caught my eye. It’s a casual shot, like any one of us would take of one of our favorite horses.

But the amount of talent this photo captured is astounding. The horse is the legendary Thoroughbred Jet Run, who went on to win the 1981 FEI World Cup Final, team and individual gold at the 1979 Pan American Games, and countless grand prix classes.

The two women are (left) Melanie Smith Taylor, World Cup Final winner and Olympic team gold medalist, and Katie Monahan Prudent, who was second at the 1982 World Cup Final. They’re now two of the most famous U.S. show jumpers and have both gone on to train the talent of tomorrow. The groom was identified on the back of the photo as Roger Brabant; a Google search didn’t turn up much on him, sadly.

By my calculations, Jet Run is 6 at the time of the photo, and Prudent and Taylor are in their early 20s. This was taken in 1974, at the start of their careers, before any of them became famous, in the chandelier-bedecked indoor of Winter Place Farm.

To find out more about Winter Place and see more fantastic photos, like of the chandeliers and fountains, you’ll have to check out the Untacked issue—I promise it’s worth the read.

I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the early ’80s as a horse-crazy kid, and it astounds me that I had never known that for seven years in the ‘70s, the Eastern Shore was home to the best and brightest of the hunter/jumper world. Taylor, Prudent, Bernie Traurig, Robert Ridland, Gozzi, Jet Run, Southside, Royal Blue, Old Dominion—they’re all names etched in hunter/jumper history, and they all called Winter Place home in that era.

It’s hard to imagine what the equivalent of Winter Place would be in this day and age. I don’t know that that much human and equine talent has ever cohabited on one farm since. Ronnie Beard, who was the trainer mastermind behind Winter Place, credits those golden years there with fostering some pretty impressive horsemen who went on to become legends. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there were a similar place today, where talented young riders of any background could be matched up with spectacular horses and sent out to win ribbons, building the foundations for medal-winning careers?

I loved doing the research for my Winter Place article. Bradley Caine was amazingly helpful, pulling priceless photos out of her personal albums and telling me wonderful story after story. Everyone I talked to about Winter Place spoke of their time there with a softness to their voice, a fondness in their memories.

At the Chronicle, we work hard to keep you informed about the winners of today—what gives them an edge, how they achieve success—and the issues our sports face. But we also have a rich history of more than 75 years in documenting equestrian sport, and we feel it’s important to shine a light on important pieces of the past, too.

As the saying goes, you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.