Performance Halter Geldings

Rachel Kolb ends a 'remarkable' year with Remarkable Can repeating as world champion.

by Larri Jo Starkey
The American Quarter Horse Journal

At the end of a “remarkable” year, Rachel Kolb of Lebanon, Ohio, just had gratitude on her mind, both for her friends and family and for her horse, Remarkable Can.

“I just want to thank my parents, Mark and Cheryl, for everything they’ve done to support me in my hobby,” Rachel said. “I want to thank the Norgrant family and Adrienne Staples for giving me the opportunity to own such a remarkable horse.”

Remarkable Can, aka “Snoop,” took Rachel to the world championship in performance halter geldings August 3 at the 2012 Built Ford Tough AQHYA World Championship Show. It was their second year to win the title.

Performance halter geldings was run in two splits, with the top 30 making it back to a final class. Rachel had been focused on returning to the Ford Youth World, but she wanted to work on her performance classes, not just the single halter class. Nevertheless, she walked into her split with a huge smile on her face.

“I was so excited,” she said. “This is my first class at the Youth World, and I was hoping we could start with a bang, but he’s an all-around horse and wanted to focus on performance events more so than halter, so I wasn’t sure. We pulled a little bit of weight off him but he still showed great. He was great, and I’m just thrilled.

Earlier in the year, Rachel sat down with her trainer, Bruce Walquist of Cleburne, Texas, and made a plan for the year.

“I told him that I wanted to do well at the bigger shows this year,” she said. “I didn’t want to chase the weekend shows. I wanted to focus on the Youth World and the other big shows. I’m so excited it paid off. I feel like the big shows have helped as a gauge of the competition and where we’re at. It’s a lot tougher. We don’t always win at the big shows. We get beat a lot, and it just pushes us to get better and try harder and do our best.”

Rachel and Snoop earned a youth AQHA Championship and a youth performance Championship. Along the way, they also made new friends.

“I want to thank the whole Walquist family for adopting Snoop and me this summer,” she added. “They’ve been so great to us. They’ve helped us. It’s been a great year with them.”

Rachel’s life changes in just two weeks, when she starts college.

“I’ll be a student at Georgia on the horsemanship team,” she said. “I’m nervous but very excited. I went and visited the school, and it was absolutely beautiful, and I loved the girls. They seemed so sweet, and they have a really good business program. I’m going to study business, so that was why I chose Georgia.”

She still plans to show Snoop at the All American Quarter Horse Congress and to return in 2013 to defend her title one more time.

But between now and then, she plans to feed Snoop some of his favorite treat, carrots, for which he has an insatiable appetite.

“He’ll eat as many as I’ll feed him.”