Las Vegan Whitney Richardson, 19, an amateur horse trail rider, found that out two years ago when she took a 17-year-old gelding named Ember (aka Idjett) out of retirement and just a month later, won the Half-Arabian Trail, Amateur Owner to Ride class at the Whittier Host Lions Club Arabian Horse Show in Pomona, Calif.
Two years, and who knows how many ribbons and several championships later, Richardson is extremely happy with the decision she made on the half-Arabian, Morgan, quarter horse, thoroughbred and Appaloosa mix that she and trainer Lou Roper playfully say looks like a lot like a yak.
Two months ago, Richardson, a 2005 graduate of Faith Lutheran High School who is now in her freshman year at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, had the biggest win of her career when she captured the national championship while riding Ember in the Half-Arabian Trail, Adult Amateur Owner division of the U.S. National Arabian and Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show held Oct. 20-29 at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds Horse Arena at Expo New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Home for the holidays and sitting in her family's living room, with a fireplace adorned with scores of multi-colored ribbons and a mantle overflowing with trophies and plaques the teen has won in trail riding, Richardson explained how she got up for the biggest win of her young life.
"Things were going bad and I was really upset (in her personal life) and I hadn't ridden my horse in so long because I was away at college and so I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh, I'm going to show at nationals where all these people are the best and I'm going to be so bad. I'm going to be so rusty. I'm not going to know how to ride him anymore,' " Richardson said. "I was just imagining the worst. But then I was sitting in my dorm room and thinking, 'You've done this before. This is where you know you upset yourself all the time, when you start second-guessing yourself.' So I just decided to leave it all in the dorm room and just go and ride my horse and not get emotional."
Richardson finished with a score of 223 points, five points better than second-place finisher Patricia Wagner of Scottsdale, Ariz., riding IM Destinees Hobby. In trail riding, all riders start with a rough score of 70 and then are awarded or deducted points depending on performance. Richardson was awarded an 82 by one of the judges, the highest score she said she has ever received in her life.
Richardson said her trainer Lou Roper -- who worked with the most famous trail rider ever in Frank Evans -- was very impressed with her championship ride at nationals.
"My trainer actually told me, 'This is the best I've ever seen you ride,' " Richardson said. " 'If you rode like this when you were a youth rider, I wouldn't have worried about you at all.' "
Roper, who has been nominated four times by the Arabian Professional & Amateur Horseman's Association for the Working Western Trainer of the Year award, trains several horses owned by the Richardson family at his Roper Ranch located in San Marco, Calif., and helped breed Ember, who hadn't been shown or in training for seven years before he and Richardson took a chance on the horse back in 2003.
Besides training the youngest rider to win in Albuquerque in Richardson, Roper's barn also backed the oldest winner in Richard Cavanaugh, an 81-year-old who won the Purebred Trail Adult Amateur Owner to Ride class.
Richardson, who has shown horses since she was 3 when she began with a Nevada State Horsemen's Association leadline, explained what she thought was the most challenging aspect of her sport.
"I think the thing that's the hardest for me is I have a really top-notch horse," she said. "To me, he is just everything. He is just so talented. My trainer Lou Roper did such an amazing job on him. In my eyes, he is the best half-Arab trail horse in the country. My horse is good and so talented that he does anything I ask, but I also think that's a curse for me because I'm sitting on this horse that is brilliant and amazing and so talented and I'm thinking, 'I hope I don't mess it up.' That's the hardest thing for me in riding trail horses."
The teen, who had just received her grades from her first semester at college, where she posted a 3.5 grade-point average and made the dean's honor roll, explained how she first became involved with horses.
"It's really funny because my mom grew up (getting into) horses and all that and you have my dad who played basketball and was in track and stuff," Richardson said. "My mom and I always took lessons and such but my dad was like, 'I want you to play basketball. I want you to play soccer. I want you to do track.' "
Weighing the wishes of a mom who loved horses and a dad who was a star athlete -- her father, Brad, an attorney in Las Vegas, played baseball, basketball and ran track in his youth and is a member of the Illinois Basketball Hall of Fame -- Richardson, who was attending Las Vegas Day School at the time, listened to her body.
"I have high arches in my feet and bad knees and so when I am running and pounding and playing basketball all the time, it hurt my knees really bad," she said.
So with that passion for horses still burning inside of her, Richardson made a decision to pursue trail riding.
Richardson, who has twice won the Youth National Championship in trail and who won the Canadian Nationals last summer, talked about how a girl from Las Vegas ended up going to school in Wyoming.
"I'm one of those people who's scared of change and yet I love big changes," she said. "I loved the thought of going to Wyoming and not knowing anyone basically."
She discovered the campus somewhat by chance.
"Actually, I was on my way to the Canadian Nationals and we went through Cheyenne and I just thought Cheyenne was the neatest town," Richardson said. "I love the city, but I've always been the type of girl that's preferred a slow pace kind of quiet place to be. I just loved it. I always felt comfortable and welcome in Wyoming. People were very laid back and very nice and I always felt comfortable and welcome there."
Feeling comfortable in the West is perhaps a pretty easy thing for someone who is a fifth-generation Nevadan. Richardson's great-great grandfather Alphonse was the first family member to move to Nevada five years after it officially became a state.
Whitney's mother, Elaine Revert Richardson, explained the family lineage.
"My great grandpa went to Virginia City in 1874 from France right after the Comstock Lode (discovery of silver in the Sierra Nevadas)," Elaine Revert Richardson said. "And he took my grandpa Albert, who was 5 years old at the time, with him. He was born in 1869 in France. As time went on, there were some French-speaking people in Verdi, which is outside Reno, and so Alphonse gave Albert a dollar and told him to make his way to Verdi. He was just a small child, and he started working in a store for a while where he couldn't even see over the counters because he was so short.
"Eventually, he started working in the mills and ended up owning them. He became the proprietor of the Verdi Lumber Company in the Sierras and he had everything up there. He was really one of the first millionaires who didn't make his money from mining. He ended up going to Beatty and my dad (Bob Revert) and his brothers had the Revert Brothers Inc."
Bob Revert, Whitney's grandfather, and his brothers Norm and Art, formed the Revert Brothers oil and gas company, which eventually served the Nevada Test Site and Death Valley.
Revert, who died in April, also was a former Nevada assemblyman and served in the U.S. Army in World War II. The family also owned the famous Beatty Ranch, which they sold last year.
Richardson, who recently declared psychology as her major, was still mulling a career path that could keep her close to the animals she has loved her entire life.
"I think about it (a profession) ... Horses are the only thing I've ever wanted to do," she said. "That's been my passion my whole life, I've been around them. I ask myself, 'What am I doing going into psychology?'
"I mean, I love psychology, but it's like, 'Why am I not dealing with the equine science route?' I'm kind of thinking that now that that's what I should be doing."
As a freshman only halfway through her first year of college, Richardson still has time to consider career paths. One decision that must be made by the teen, her parents and trainer Roper in the near future is whether to retire Ember, who will turn 20 this April.
With tears welling up in her eyes and her voice cracking a bit, Richardson talked about the prospects of retiring the horse that she grew so close to.
"He's been so good to me," Richardson said of the dark bay with a white star. "I've won everything on him. He's paid his dues. He's done what he has had to do."
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