06/11/2026
What can God do in your life? A flat tire made Harry late to the auction, and that small inconvenience ended up saving a horse that was hours away from the slaughterhouse.
In February 1956, a riding instructor named Harry DeLeyer drove to an auction in New Holland, Pennsylvania. He was not searching for a champion or a future legend. He simply needed safe, dependable animals that could carry beginner riders around a practice ring.
Harry himself was still building a life. Only a few years earlier, he had arrived in America from the Netherlands with little more than his knowledge of horses and a determination to start over after surviving Nazi-occupied Holland during the war. Money was tight, and every dollar mattered.
Then a flat tire delayed him.
By the time Harry arrived, the auction yard was nearly empty. The best animals were already gone. What remained were the horses nobody wanted—animals considered too slow, too plain, or too damaged. Many were being loaded onto a truck bound for a slaughterhouse.
Harry was preparing to leave when he noticed a gray plow horse with a broad body and scars on his shoulder from years of hard labor in the fields. There was nothing outstanding about him at first glance, yet something made Harry stop. The horse stood quietly amid the noise. His eyes were calm, and he simply looked back at Harry.
"How much?" Harry asked.
"Eighty dollars."
❤ Isaiah 43:19 (The Message):
"Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands."
A few moments later, the horse stepped off the slaughter truck and into a completely different future. When Harry brought him home through falling snow, his four-year-old daughter Harriet watched from the yard. Snowflakes covered the horse's gray coat until he seemed almost white.
"He looks like a snowman," she said. The name was adorable.
For the next several months, Snowman was the perfect school horse—friendly, gentle, patient, and dependable.
❤Habakkuk 1:5 (AMP):
"Look among the nations! See! Be astounded! Marvel! For I am exceedingly amazed at what I am doing in your days—a deed which you will not believe if it is told to you."
Later, Harry decided to sell him to a local doctor to help support his family.
That only lasted less than a day. The next morning, Snowman was standing right back in Harry's barn. The doctor took him home again. The following day, Snowman returned. So, Harry built stronger fences, but Snowman jumped right over them. Then the doctor tied a heavy tire to his leg to slow him down, but he managed to jump the fences anyway. Again and again, he escaped and made his way back to Harry's farm.
A horse that had spent years pulling plows suddenly proved he had an extraordinary, unknown talent for jumping. Plus, what was even more remarkable, he seemed determined to choose the home where he wanted to live.
Harry finally stopped fighting it. If Snowman wanted to stay, he would stay. So, the two began training together, and Snowman learned with incredible speed. His power and intelligence became extraordinarily unique.
By 1958, only two years after being rescued from a slaughter truck, Snowman entered Madison Square Garden to compete against expensive, well-bred show jumpers with impeccable pedigrees and wealthy owners. Snowman had an impossible dream, so it seemed, without pedigrees or high-dollar elite training.
❤ 2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJV):
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
He was still the same large-boned gray gelding, scarred from his past of hard-driven farm work, which appeared to have given him great strength and endurance.
Then he started winning against everybody.
That year, Snowman captured the sport's highest honors and swept the major championships. Audiences fell in love with "The Cinderella Horse."
On Saturday, he would soar above championship jumps before thousands of screaming fans. On Sunday, he would patiently carry a child around in a circle in the riding ring.
Fame never changed his gentle heart.
In an era dominated by depressing headlines, Snowman’s "Cinderella" story offered the world pure hope.
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Proverbs 16:9 (KJV):
"A man's heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps."
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It was a reminder that beginnings do not determine endings, that value can be hidden beneath appearances, and that greatness sometimes emerges from places nobody thought to look.
Snowman returned to Madison Square Garden in 1959 and won again. He continued competing at the highest levels until his retirement in 1969 at the Garden, where the crowd rose to its feet and sang "Auld Lang Syne" to their champion Snowman of the "Cinderella" impossible dream, made possible with determination and hope.
❤ Ephesians 6:10 (TPT):
"Now my beloved ones, I have saved these most important words for last: Be super-strong in the Lord’s power, bound to him during your life-union with him. Draw your strength from the might of his boundless power."
He spent his remaining years in comfort on Harry's Long Island farm, accepting carrots from children until he passed away peacefully in 1974.
Had Harry arrived at the auction on time, and not had that flat tire, he would have bought an ordinary horse and driven home satisfied. Snowman would have remained on that truck. Their paths never would have crossed. Instead, a delayed trip created one of the most beloved "Cinderella" stories in sports history.
❤ Psalm 118:22-23 (NKJV):
"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes."
"I came to this country with nothing in my pocket," Harry reflected years later. "Then I met Snowman, and he made me someone who mattered in this country."
All because of eighty dollars and a flat tire. Eighty dollars saved a horse that nobody wanted, and gave the world a "Cinderella" champion nobody will ever forget.
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●Question for Reflection
Think about a time when a major inconvenience or a "flat tire" in your life completely shifted your direction. Looking back, how did that delay protect you or lead you to something beautiful?
