Prestige Goes For The Prestigious

The Chronicle of the Horse reports

August 7,2019 A Gamble Taken. It was either going to be a brilliant idea or an idiot idea, Jimmy Torano admitted—with not much in between. But that is always the gamble with off-the-wall ideas. His client Kat Fuqua had a fancy large green pony, Prestige, and the pair were collecting tricolor after tricolor in the large green pony division at the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida). But after Florida, Torano decided to test the pony and try him in the regular division in the hopes of them qualifying for the fall indoor circuit.

So as Fuqua and Torano looked ahead to the USEF Pony Finals, they had two options: compete in the large green division or the regular division. Torano wanted to kick it up a notch. “About two months ago I said to [Kat’s mother Shereen], ‘We’re qualified in the greens and we’re qualified in the larges.’ I said ‘I think we should really make a run and try to win the larges. I know we can win the greens, but if we can win the larges here, it’ll be a real big deal,’ ” said Torano.

And Kat followed his off-the-wall idea and took on the mature competition. Sitting in third after the model and the flat out of 145 ponies, the 12-year-old and the 8-year-old Belgian Riding Pony (Ive Van De Delthoeve—Bichette Du Moulin De Pierres), fittingly named “Prince,” calmly walked into the Walnut Arena. And they exited with the highest total score of 1051.42—topping Fuqua’s championship mount last year, Brighton, ridden this year by Samantha Takacs.

“She’s a freak,” said Torano of Kat. “She’s a real talent. She’s got ice water in her veins. To come in and do what she did today was unbelievable. To win it last year, you go late, you got Brighton coming in behind you, and to be able to nail it the way she did. It was unbelievable.”