JUMPING

THIS TOP-FLIGHT JUMPER HAS ALSO LEAPT INTO HIS OWNER’S HEART.

BY HOLLY CLANAHAN, AMERICA'S HORSE

He started life as an orphan, graduated to the ranks of winning racehorse, then tried a stint as a racetrack pony horse. And now, in his latest incarnation, Rio Toro is a world champion jumper.

This home-bred and home-trained horse turned in two clean runs November 17 to earn his first AQHA world championship in a tough jump-off. Five horses jumped clean in the first round, and three of them repeated the feat in the timed jump-off that called for tighter turns and higher jumps. “Rio” and his owner and trainer Paulette Stoudt sailed through the course in 34.830 seconds, nearly three seconds faster than the reserve world champion.

In the first round, “My strategy was to keep myself together, because I knew I had the horse to do it,” Stoudt said. She said she wanted to keep out of his way because she knew “I could interfere with him.”

Nothing changed when the jump-off called for a faster but still-clean run.

“I just knew I had to keep my leg on,” she said. “He can turn on a dime. As long as I keep my leg on, he’ll go for it.”

That never-say-die attitude was evident from the very beginning. Stoudt’s boyfriend, Gerald Keesling, bred Rio, and he told of a rough start for the now-16.2-hand sorrel gelding.

“His mother died when he was a month old, so we got a Thoroughbred nurse mare,” Keesling said. But that took a few days to get arranged, and “We were worried that he wouldn’t make it.” 

Rio Toro and Paulette Stoudt turned in two clean runs to win the 2005 jumping world championship.

He rebounded nicely, however, and was ready for the racetrack as a 2-year-old. He won a stakes race at The Woodlands racetrack in Kansas City, Kansas. The following year, he placed second in a graded derby at The Woodlands. His lifetime record showed 16 starts, with four wins, five seconds and one third. Rio earned $29,520 on the track, and Stoudt said he loved every minute of it.

“He was a blast,” she said. “Some horses love their job, and he was one of them. He loved the racetrack. He wanted to play, he wanted to gallop on the racetrack, he wanted to watch the other horses, he wanted to be competitive.”

And he thrived on the raucous atmosphere.

“The more commotion there was, the higher he got,” Stoudt said. He’d rattle the plastic jugs that were hung around his stall, and “you knew he was ready.”

But after his 3-year-old season, Stoudt and Keesling decided it was time for Rio to find a new career.

“I retired him sound as a 3-year-old because I wanted him as a jumping horse,” Stoudt said.

Immediately after his retirement, he put in some time as a pony horse on the racetrack – and he still does some of that work at home in Punta Gorda, Florida, when Keesling and Stoudt are training some more of their homebreds for the track.

“Gerald’s been breeding race horses for 30 years,” Stoudt said. “He bred and raised (Rio’s) mother.”

The couple also raises barrel horses, as well as jumpers, and every horse on their farm has been bred, raised and trained there.

And although those events may seem fairly disparate, Stoudt put her finger on the commonality.

“I like the performance events that are not judged,” she said. In racing, barrels and jumping, “It’s either you do or you don’t. There’s no opinion to it.”

Jumping has been a good fit for the 15-year-old Rio, who won both amateur and open jumping at the 2004 All American Quarter Horse Congress. For five years before that, he won one division or the other. This year at the World Show, he also made the jump-off in amateur jumping and placed fourth.

But ask Stoudt what she likes best about him, and she won’t talk about any of those show-ring successes.

“He’s my soul mate,” she said simply. “I just love him.

“He’s got such a personality. He’s funny. He’s very people oriented. He knows when you come; he knows when you open a carrot bag. If you were to think of what he’d be, it’d be a comedian,” Stoudt said.

“He just has a great disposition. You just can’t get any better than Rio.”