Page 47 - NM Spring 2019

Congratulations to the 2018 New Mexico Champions and their connections!
2018 NEW MEXICO Racing Champions by Diane M. Ciarloni
Whether you’re religious or not, the chances are pretty good you’ve heard those old words insisting “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”
You’re entitled to your own beliefs about who gives and who takes, but there is one fact that is incontrovertible. That is: a reversal of fortune can occur at any time. Sometimes it hits with no warning. It can flatten with the devas- tating velocity of a “cat 4” hurricane, leaving the recipient of the ugliness sitting in the middle of bank accounts, investments, relationships, mort- gages, ranches, horses and more that are reduced to heartbreaking rubble.
We’ve all seen it. Some of us have painful, firsthand experience. What happened?
What caused the reversal of the good times into the bad times?
Sometimes we can follow the trail of circum- stances leading to the loss. Sometimes we can’t. All we know for sure is we just woke up one morning and everything was gone.
At least, that was our first thought.
There is one thing we literally cannot lose. We can die and be buried in a Pauper’s Field with a piece of wood stuck into the ground
to mark our humble gravesite. When the sun rises and shines on that splinter-filled chunk of wood, we read the crude carving. It says:
John Doe, the breeder (or the owner or the trainer or the rider) of a Champion.
Absolutely nothing can take away that rela- tionship of distinction; that relationship with, in this case, a Champion horse. It doesn’t mat- ter if the Champion status is at the national, state, local or even 4-H level, the definition remains the same:
First among all contestants or competitors; defeating all opponents in a competition...
That breeder, owner, trainer or rider may lose everything, but the association with a Champion will remain, regardless of all other circumstances.
Congratulations to the 2018 New Mexico Champions and their connections!
Whether you’re religious or not, the chances are pretty good you’ve heard those old words insisting “the Lord giveth
and the Lord taketh away.”
“The association with a Champion will remain, regardless of all other circumstances.”
SPRING 2019 45