Stake Race

For Sara Banks and Double Deckajet, winning a world championship only took eight seconds.

by Allison Armstrong
The American Quarter Horse Journal

As any good speed event competitor knows, a lot can happen in 8.3 seconds.

For Sara Banks of Brandon, Mississippi, and her horse, Double Deckajet, aka “Kit,” 8.3 seconds was all it took to earn the world championship in the stake race class at the 2012 Built Ford Tough AQHYA World Championship Show.

“I feel great,” Sara said in her Journal winning run interview. “I came in here last year and got reserve after I won the prelims. So this year, I came in with a vengeance to win.”

And win she did. Sara and Kit blazed through both their preliminary run and their finals run in 8.3. seconds, resulting in an overall time of 16.609 seconds for the class.

“We ran a pretty average time (for us),” said Sara. “On a good day, we run an 8.0. I was kinda hoping we’d come out here and show everybody what we were worth, but (we were) about as consistent as we could be.”

Bred by L. Paige Cox of Loxley, Alabama, Kit is a 1992 bay gelding by Mr Jet Radell and out of Bargain Rules by Coed Of Rules.

Because Sara sometimes gets nervous before entering the arena, she and Kit have a special routine that they follow before every class.

 “We have to pick on each other before we go in or else we don’t do good,” Sara said with a laugh. “We just push each other around. I bump him a lot and pat him on the neck, and we have lots of fun.”

Like many of her competitors, Sara was born and raised in the horse showing world.

“My mom grew up showing horses, and so from the age she could put me on a horse, I was showing horses. I was about 3 when I got my first belt buckle, and that’s when I fell in love with it.”

Winning a world championship is especially meaningful to Sara this year since she’s competing in her final Ford Youth World. This fall, she’ll be starting her sophomore year at Holmes Community College in Brandon, which means showing less and studying more.

“I’d like to thank my mom,” Sara said. “She’s always been there for me. She’s always supporting me and always watching me and never misses a show. I just love my mom – she’s the one who got me into all of this. I don’t have a trainer, so me and my mom do everything ourselves.”