Monday Night Action
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Welcome to prime time! That’s exactly what the Monday evening session was. The big shooters came out in droves as the lineup of classes offered was spectacular. Junior horses, amateur ladies and amateur gentlemens, with a few open pony qualifiers kept exhibitors enthralled and then we ended with the first of the big three qualifiers, the Five-Gaited Stallion Stake. You also knew Louisville was well underway as several times the audience showed its love for horses that didn’t make the last pass. Nothing against the winners, this is just the way Louisville always has been. This crowd loves great effort and expressive horses and ponies and rewards them for those performances.
World’s grand champion Top Of The Mark closed out tonight with a repeat performance from his 2016 World’s Champion Five-Gaited Stallion title, providing the first piece of the puzzle for Saturday night’s grand finale.
While there were plenty of top performances from the other divisions, the gaited horses were the stars of Monday night. Highlighting that group was the 17-entry Junior Five-Gaited Stallion/Gelding class and wow was there some stock in this one. Lexington winner Phor The Love Of Pete rocked the green shavings from start to finish with Mike Tunstall providing the world’s champion ride for Dianne and Richard Gilbert. Also giving a Louisville caliber performance was reserve world’s champion All Mighty Joe, an entry ridden by Kenny Smith for Barbara Goodman Manilow. True Royalty and Lionel Ferreira also got a good part of it with a third-place finish in a great class for Melrose LLC. The junior mare class wasn’t nearly as large but Burt Honaker and Kiss Goodbye were nonetheless top of the line for David and Kim Goodrum to defeat four other challengers.
Talking about a fantasy show string, tonight we had Man On The Move and CH My Wonder winning section one and two of the Ladies Amateur Five-Gaited Gelding class, Walterway’s Born To Be Wild taking the ladies amateur mare class and Questionable Conversation winning the Amateur Gentlemen’s Five-Gaited class where Kalarama Farm had three of the top four ribbon winners.
We were overflowing with harness horses tonight as there was an unheard-of split of the amateur gentlemen’s class with Glenn T. Werry catch driving Nutter Butter for Grey Ridge Farm and Sally Groub Gayeski to take section one and Kenny Wheeler winning section two with Undulata’s Secret Rendezvous’ harness debut. Elisabeth Goth and Here Comes The Boom topped a talent laden amateur ladies class and then Mary Gise took CH Our Brilliant Belle for her fifth ladies world’s title.
Stephanie Brannan won her first personal world’s championship with What A Mystery in the Junior Fine Harness Mare class for Linda Lowary. Grey Ridge Wildcat was the second Neil Visser trained harness star of the night, winning the junior stallion/gelding class for Terri Dolan.
Open pony qualifiers included Holli Hayes and Mississippi Queen in the Harness Pony Mare Stake and Jeff McClean with Mississippi Queen’s full sister, Craycroft Hallelujah, in the Hackney Pony Mare Stake. McClean also took the Road Pony 50”-52” qualifier with Prime Time’s Choice LF.
Stars of tonight’s three-gaited division included Cherished Assets (junior over 2), Christine Daae (junior under 2), CH Platinum Moon (amateur under 2) and Espresso Noir (amateur over 2).
We start again tomorrow morning at 9:00 with junior exhibitor country pleasure 14-17 riders.
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