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WORLD CUP HORSEMANSHIP-SATURDAY U.S. CAPTURES ANOTHER GOLD WITH ITALY TAKING SILVER. BY CHRISTINE HAMILTON AND TONYA RATLIFF-GARRISON
Sharnai Thompson, 19, and Principle Income won their second Youth World Cup gold medal on Saturday, this time in horsemanship. But the win lost Sharnai a bet to Holly Johnson, 16, of Australia, who took bronze in the class. “We’re standing in the lineup,” Sharnai explained immediately after the class, “and Holly goes, ‘You won that by a mile!’” Sharnai didn’t think so because the judge called her out second for the rail work. She told Holly that usually the call-out order is pretty close to the eventual order for the class. But Holly wasn’t convinced. So Sharnai offered a bet on the outcome, and Holly took her up on it. “I said, ‘Well, if I lose, I’ll clean your stalls, and if you lose, you clean my stalls,’” Sharnai continued with a laugh. “And I lost! But I’ll gladly trade cleaning stalls for winning!” The girls’ good-natured camaraderie in the line-up speaks for the Youth World Cup atmosphere in general. Sharnai has really enjoyed getting to know youth from across the globe. “The Swiss are really, really funny,” she said. “They’ve taught us some new words. I’ve gotten to know the Italians a little bit; the Australians are very nice. The Canadians are stalled next to us, and they’ve been very, very gracious, saying ‘Congratulations’ and ‘Good morning.’ But everybody has! It’s been great! “Not only that, but my team members and I have gotten closer,” she added. “We weren’t close friends when we came here, I wasn’t with any of them. We’ve had a long week but we’ve had no fighting and no drama!” A multiple youth world championship winner, Sharnai thinks the Youth World Cup is a very different challenge from the Ford AQHYA World Championship Show, primarily because every team competes on a set of five horses that team members are unfamiliar with. “It’s hard because you don’t know how far to push your horse,” Sharnai said. “You don’t know its potential. You don’t know what’s going to happen when you get in there. You play with the line of being good enough and being conservative enough to get through it. “It’s definitely hard. If I go to the Youth World and I show too hard and mess up something, that’s my fault. It’s your job to know your limits if it’s your own horse. “Here, you’ve just got to just take information you can from others, any little critique you can, and grow with it, make the best of it. “It’s worked so far!” ITALY TAKES THE SILVER Sara D’Imperio is a trained classical dancer, but her grace doesn’t just show up on the stage. It can also be found in the show arena. On Saturday, July 1, the 16-year-old Italian used her skills to take the silver medal in the 2006 Youth World Cup horsemanship class. It was her second medal of the day aboard 13-year-old gelding Im Rusty Impression, owned by Beth Donley. She also took the gold in trail. “I knew he would do well because in the warm-up pen, he was very, very good,” Sara said. “He’s a very good horse.” Team Italy’s coach, AQHA Professional Horseman Debbie Cooper, said riding a horse like Im Rusty Impression has been an opportunity of a lifetime for Sara. But she also emphasizes a lot of the credit for the medal wins can be attributed to Sara’s riding and dancing skills. “In the horsemanship class, you do a lot of work on body position: where your legs go, your shoulders, chin and stuff like that,” Debbie said. “But Sara’s dance training helps her presence and her poise. It’s just easy for her to have that look about her.” Sara agrees. “Yes, it helps,” she said. “It helps to make me more elegant. More graceful.” But there could be more medals in Sara’s future as she still had to compete in western riding and hunt seat equitation on Saturday. “I’m not worried about the western riding, but I’m nervous about hunt seat,” Sara said. “But I know I have a great horse, so hopefully I’ll do OK.” For more results on horsemanship, click HERE.
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