Grey Cup tradition: Calgary fan rides horse into Vancouver hotel
24-year-old Langley horse Tuffy munches on apples at Holiday Inn
The Calgary football tradition of horsing around during Grey Cup festivities continues.
Stampeders' supporter Ted Hall of Langley, B.C., has ridden his 24-year-old horse Tuffy, through a crowd of chanting fans and camera flashes and into a hotel in downtown Vancouver.
In the lobby, he saluted the crowd and rode Tuffy to the reception desk, where the horse munched on carrots and Granny Smith apples.
Hall says Tuffy will march in her fourth Grey Cup parade on Saturday.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi says the horse tradition began at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto in 1948 and involved a man who would become mayor of the Alberta city two years later.
He says that when the Stampeders took on the Toronto Argonauts two years ago, the same hotel wasn't thrilled about the idea but eventually relented.