12/16/2025
Best duo EVER
So fortunate to have seen this horse in action
He was the first horse inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame.
His principal rider was the most successful show jumper in history, a member of 16 Nations’ Cup teams and ten World Championships, winning over 70 Grand Prix in his career. In 1987 he was the AGA Rider of the Year, AHSA Horseman of the Year, and took two Silver Medals at the Pan Am Games.
Together Idle Dice and Rodney Jenkins formed a bond that led to unprecedented success in American show jumping history, winning Grand Prix, Speed, and Puissance classes, often all at the same show.
Bred by J. L. Martin, Idle Dice was foaled in 1962 in Oklahoma and christened Jonlyle. By Hay Hook out of DK Dor, his undistinguished racing career gave no indication that a star had been born. Finishing fourth in his best race, Jonlyle never set foot in the winner’s circle. The c**t was claimed by Jack Kenny at Waterford Park (now known as Mountaineer Racetrack) in Chester, West Virginia.
Jonlyle’s failure at the track was not for lack of speed, which he would later prove so well in the show jumping arena. He failed, because he was more interested in the crowd than in racing. Instead of flattening out his body and extending his neck for a win, he would raise his head in the stretch and observe the fans.
In the fall of 1968, renowned judge and horseman Daniel Lenehan asked Bernie Traurig to come take a look at a jumper named Intrepid. The horse wasn’t too far from where Bernie lived in Pennsylvania, and Bernie felt pretty confident that he would be bringing him home, so he took his six-horse Imperator van and traveled to Danny’s place for a look.
Intrepid, however, failed to impress Bernie, and he planned to leave with an empty van when Danny suggested that perhaps he “should take a look at a big dark brown four-year-old Thoroughbred whose owner Elizabeth (Libby) Slaughter was hilltopping.” Libby had purchased the horse off of Jack Kenny, but he proved to be too much horse for foxhunting.
Intrigued by the horse’s good looks and athletic build, Bernie asked Danny’s daughter Sheila to ride him. Bernie remembers, “It only took two jumps over a crossrail where he seemed unencumbered by gravity to encourage me to get in the tack. Fifteen minutes later I was jumping a double about 3’3″ and he was still jumping as high and easy as he did over the crossrail. Danny stopped me and said Libby had not seen this before and I had better stop before she changes her mind. I asked Danny the price.”
When Bernie learned that the price was $3500 he didn’t waste a second. Riding Jonlyle to his van, Bernie loaded him still tacked up, handed Danny a check for $3500 along with his bridle and saddle, and then “hightailed it out of there as fast as I could.”
“My dad named him Idle Dice,” says Bernie, “and I must say he was the easiest horse to transform into a show horse I ever had. He was brave, smart, sane, cooperative, and he took to jumping like a fish to water.”
Around the barn, Idle Dice became known as “Ike.”
Bernie began showing Ike in the spring of 1969 in the First Year Greens in local Pennsylvania shows. The height proved so easy for the horse that Bernie added four foot working classes to his repertoire mid-season. Idle Dice was champion in the First Year Greens at Fairfield that spring, catching the attention of both George Morris and Conrad Homfeld.
For weeks Bernie tried to convince Rodney Jenkins to try Idle Dice as a jumper, “literally begging him,” confesses Bernie.
“Finally, at the Branchville show (Sussex) I convinced him.” At daybreak the following morning Rodney was on Idle Dice jumping him in the schooling ring…at the top of the standards.
“He couldn’t wait to give me a check for his sponsor Harry Gill,” recalls Bernie, who couldn’t sleep the night before thinking of the profit he and his wife Tiff would make from their investment with such a big sale as $12,000.
“Rodney,” says Bernie, “was so nervous he refused to take a commission, stating Harry had never paid this much money for a horse before.”
Rodney’s first thought when he rode Idle Dice that morning was, “Everything he did was balanced. He walked balanced, he trotted balanced, he galloped and cantered balanced, and when he jumped he never ever jumped off his forehand. He always jumped off his hocks.”
Rodney has never taken a formal lesson in his life. Instead he learned by watching others, listening to his horses tell him how they wanted to be ridden, and absorbing his father Enis’ boundless well of knowledge. “He was all the lessons I needed. Anytime you messed up, he would tell you,” laughs Rodney. “He was probably the best horseman I ever met.”
As Enis (whom everyone knew as “Chief”) was a huntsman for a local pack, Rodney’s early riding experiences were as a whipper-in on the hunt field. Wanting to horse show, but initially being denied the opportunity, Rodney would go out into the woods at home behind his father’s barn and create courses out of branches and logs that he found to play horse show.
When he went to horse shows, “I watched the people who won. I’d see their style and try to integrate it into the way I rode.”
Rodney’s innate sense of pace, infallible eye for a distance, and ability to bring out the best in every horse he rode, prompted Conrad Homfeld to say he considers Rodney “the most natural talent I have ever seen.”
Elizabeth Busche Burke called Rodney “magic on a horse, pure magic.”
📎 Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2019/10/08/a-legendary-team-idle-dice-and-rodney-jenkins/
