by 1989 Tevis Winner Lari Shea
Did I expect to win the Tevis Cup when I entered my twelve-year-old Arabian gelding, Sur Sherif, in the 1989 Western States One Hundred Miles in One Day Endurance Ride through the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains? No...I was simply determined to finish.
That might have seemed like a modest goal, considering how fast Sherif was, how well he moved, and how quickly he recovered after exertion. But Sherif had a way of being his own worst enemy and allowing his psyche to get him hurt. In the 1987 and 1988 Tevis Cup races he was hyper, distracted, unratable, and out of control. Both years he hurt himself, and I think it was because he fought me along the trail. Both years he was pulled by the vets.
Sherif was not just your run-of-the-mill endurance horse with a ho-hum upbringing. He came to me at the age of eight with very little training, quite a history, and more than his share of what people call "an attitude." In 1985, when Jim and Shirley Scott of Willetts, California, gave him to me, he was a very low-mileage eight (I'll tell you why in a minute), barely broke to ride, untrained and unconditioned-but they thought he had enormous potential as an endurance horse. The moment I rode him, I agreed. I felt lots of suspension and great strength in his stride. "Ooooh, boy. This is an incredible horse," I thought. "If I can get him conditioned properly, he'll be hard to touch."
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