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JUNIOR REINING RANDY PAUL AT HIS FINEST. BY TONYA RATLIFF-GARRISON, FIELD EDITOR When Randy Paul and Starbucks Finest entered the arena seventh in the draw, fellow Arizonan Corey Cushing and Hes Wright On were leading with a 217. Randy had won the senior reining at the 2007 AQHA World Championship Show on the very last night. Would he repeat it again tonight, this time in the junior reining and with another Rancho Oso Rio horse? After a great run with the crowd behind him, Randy and Starbucks Finest marked a 220. It held up through the next 10 horses, and Randy had not only a second world championship title but his earnings of $10,358 put him in with the elite club of million-dollar riders. The Journal caught up with Randy shortly after his NBC Sports interview to ask him about his winning run. Q. Congratulations, Randy. Tell me about your ride tonight on Starbucks Finest. Randy: I was obviously real pleased with him. He tried to stay with me really good. Usually, when you call on them hard like that, they can get a little frazzled and maybe get ahead of you and scotch. But he went hard and waited good. That’s kind of what I’d been working on all week is just making sure I could do something hard and still get something soft right after. I was real pleased with my preparation and real pleased with his response to it. I was real happy. Q. What is Starbucks Finest like? Randy: He’s a really good horse. The owner, Pat Warren, she shows him in the non-pro stuff. She’s been showing him all year. For him to come here and do this in the open division, that’s saying quite a bit. My hat’s off to her for letting me do that with her horses. It’s pretty fun. He’s just a really neat horse. He can go both ways. A non-pro can jump on him and go mark good, and then you can go jump up and show him in the open. Q. Did you bring any other horses to the World Show? Randy: No, just him. I really wasn’t even planning on coming this year, and at the last minute, Pat called me and said, “Hey, we got a letter in the mail that this horse is qualified. Do you want to go?” So I said, “Yeah, let’s enter up.” I was going to be back here anyway. Q. Did you have a feeling that you might win another world championship tonight? Randy: You have to have a little confidence and think you have a chance, but you know if you’ve shown enough -- you’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen in the show pen -- you know all that stuff goes through your mind, “Oh, boy, I hope I don’t do this. I hope I don’t do that.” But you know as far as horse quality and the way the night was going, I felt really good about it. Q. Tonight’s win put you over the million-dollar mark in lifetime earnings. What does that feel like? Randy: That’s pretty neat. All my peers and the guys I look up to and bump heads with every day, you know the couple of other guys that got to the million, now I kind of know how they felt. Q. How long have you been showing reiners? Randy: It’s pretty hard to describe. I started showing in like ’86 or ’87, something like that. I haven’t been showing as long as some of the guys but a long time. Q. What does it feel like to get back-to-back world championships? Randy: That’s feels good. I think I had like six or eight reserve world champions before I finally won it last year with Sorcerers Apprentice. It was kind of like a big monkey on my back I was trying to get off. Finally, I got him off there. Q. Who would you like to thank, Randy? Randy: I would like to thank my family for backing me up and then of course Jim and Pat Warren for letting me find these good horses to go show and giving me the opportunity to go show them. And I want to thank the AQHA for giving us all the opportunity to do this for a living. It’s pretty special. Fun Fact: When Randy won the 2006 National Reining Horse Association Futurity on Taris Designer Genes, he was wearing a black shirt. Randy was wearing another black shirt with this year’s world show win. Is black his new lucky color? ‘I don’t know,” he said with a smile. “Basically, my wife, Andi, helps me out there a little bit as far as picking colors and often it’s just whatever color the horse is.” Might be the truth as both Taris Designer Genes and Starbucks Finest are buckskins. But, Randy, can we make a suggestion? You might consider wearing black all the time. WINNER STATS Horse name: Starbucks Finest Total class entries: 49
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