Sunday - American Saddlebred Horse Association

North Carolina Sweeps World’s Grand Championships;
Four-peats for Walterway’s Remember Me, Big Red!
By Alan F. Balch
Saturday Night in Freedom Hall was
one of those performances that demonstrated
once again the unpredictability of
sport, particularly the greatest equestrian
sport. It was a mix of the familiar, the
new, and the unexpected, cast against a
backdrop of 12,000 cheering fans – just
when the cynics are saying the results are
knowable before the competition takes
place (as in the racing pundits ignoring
every horse besides Big Brown in the
Belmont Stakes this year!), the horses
and their connections prove there’s just
no controlling Mother Nature and her
unknowable equine caprices.
In the world of horses, four wins is a
big number! That two horses in the
same, most prestigious of championship
nights could both score four-peats, one
an American Saddlebred and one a
Standardbred, is beyond all odds. But it
happened.
First, in a class of nine stellar Five-
Gaited ladies’ horses, CH Walterway’s
Remember Me and Ceil Wheeler of
Virginia emerged on top yet again, for
the fourth straight year! Just think of it
– four different sets of competitors, four
different sets of judges, and four different
sets of circumstances, not to mention
horse and rider (!) each aging four
years in the process, and just how
remarkable this is begins to set in.
Remember Me has been a top performer
since the year he was foaled, one of
those winners in hand, with the mental
toughness and physical ability (not to
mention superlative training over the
years by Nelson Green and John
Conatser) to go to the top in high performance
competition later on. One
would have to agree he’s the quintessential
ladies’ horse of his era, the one the
rules describe perfectly!
And what words are there to describe
Big Red and Raymond Shively? This
pair are like that watch you’ve heard
about – except these fine jewels of a
Roadster and his trainer just keep on
trotting, and ticking . . . and also keep
on licking every opponent in sight.
In the three World’s Grand
Championships, the opposite scenarios
played out. Two of the three included
defending champions back for
more; yet all three ended with
the crowning of new horses at
the top of their world.
The Fine Harness horses
traditionally appear first, and
the audience sensed an upset
from the moment the gate
opened and top horse after top
horse, eight in all, some familiar
and some not-so, marched
in with all those great harness
trots and just lit up the crowd.
The aptly named Mother
Mary (Revival x Mother
Superior), another of those
graduates from the American
Saddlebred Registry Futurity
Prize Program, had begun
knocking at the door in this
section, driven expertly by a
smiling, lovely, and determined
Sandy Lilly, a Fine Harness
picture the way it’s supposed
to look, and to the roar of the
audience this night the door
opened and that blanket of
white roses just added to the
delight. In a sense, given that
the contention ran so deep, it
was hard to imagine all three
judges could see it the same
way, without a workout,
which is a tribute to this mare’s
correctness in harness for her
new owners Anita and Richard
Simpson, not to mention the
wisdom of their purchase.
In the Three-Gaited Grand
Championship, another new
champion was pinned. Seven
trotted onto the green shavings, with
five men competing against two ladies.
Guess which gender was champion and
reserve? The winner, Mary Jane
Marcum Orr on CH Our Charming Lady,
even brought her own cheering section,
complete with flash cards so as to leave
no doubt as to their favorite! And was
this lady determined – she was a ring
general, and her lovely bay mare waved
her legs as directed – and then delivered
a great, fist-pumping honor round with
the yellow flowers, complete with shoutouts
to her supporters in the stands.
CH Breaking News and Peter Cowart
took the 2008 KSF’s last victory pass.
In the final World’s Grand
Championship, 11 Five-Gaited horses
answered the call in what promised to
be a wide-open affair. Last year’s
Reserve Champion, According To Lynn,
was back for more with Mary Gaylord
McClean, and the crowd seemed to
think it was her turn this time around,
especially since the defending champion
didn’t come to Kentucky this year.
Then the Lexington Jr. League champ,
CH Breaking News with Peter Cowart,
trotting and racking up a storm, gained
more and more attention as the class
Photo by Jen Corcoran
WCHS Results and Judges’ Cards | 1 | Sunday, August 24, 2008