BY TONYA RATLIFF-GARRISON, JOURNAL FIELD EDITOR
 |
| Brad Lund rode Shiners Diamond Jill to the 2007 Sooner Trailer Superhorse title. |
For three years, Brad Lund tried to win the Sooner Trailer Superhorse award with Jim and Michelle Holland’s With All Probability. Each of those three years ended in disappointment.
And then in 2005, success. Brad and “Ticket” won the coveted honor.
When Brad brought Shiners Diamond Jill to the 2007 AQHA World Championship Show to attempt another Super Horse title, he was more confident in the outcome.
“With All Probability taught me a lot on what I need to do,” the La Cygne, Kansas, trainer said. “My expectations were very high, and I failed. I learned a lot how to get things done and feel very fortunate to be able to ride Shiners Diamond Jill.”
“Jill,” a 7-year-old daughter of Shining Spark and out of Zans Diamond Jackie by Zans Diamond Sun, qualified for four events: performance halter mares, senior working cow horse, senior heading and senior heeling.
With Brad aboard, she finished third in senior heading and fourth in senior heeling, giving her 29.5 points and the Sooner Trailer Superhorse title.
“She’s a once-in-a-lifetime individual,” said her owner Garth Gardiner. “She has a tremendous amount of ability, but the guy on top her has got about as much ability as she has.”
Garth and his wife, Amanda, took Jill to Brad about a year ago. The couple had been showing in amateur roping, including heading and heeling, but they thought they needed some professional help.
“He’s made us such better people,” Garth said. “We’re more gracious. We have more fun.
“We just are so blessed to have all those people because all these people right here,” he said, pointing to the crowd around the new Sooner trailer, “we all cheer for each other. It’s kind of a saying around the Lund barn that everybody is a team regardless. We all win together, and we all lose together. When we win, we’re all happy, and when we lose we’re all hurt.”
But the Superhorse title all comes down to the sorrel mare.
“I’ve become attached to this mare quite a bit,” Brad said. “We’ve been through a lot of hard things. She’s very special to me. I worked real hard on this horse. I just can’t believe it.”
“I never dreamt I would have the opportunity being down here doing this,” Garth added. “It’s not our first horse show or our first World Show, so we understand the degree of difficulty to accomplish what we’ve done. Not only by having such a great individual but also having quite a bit of luck on your side because there were some tremendous horses. Any one of them could have won it. We’re very blessed again, and I owe it all to God.”
Garth also said the title couldn’t have been accomplished without AQHA and its corporate partners.
“I would just like to say thank you to AQHA and all these wonderful sponsors that put on this show,” he said.
“This is our Super Bowl of events. We do this all year long to come to Oklahoma City for the two weeks in November. It’s very special to us, and without these people that help sponsor and financially help put this on, it wouldn’t be possible. We just really appreciate everyone that is a part of this show, and we’ll be back.”
