FAMILY SHOWCASE
highly discussed topic in the show industry. Considering the Euro exchange rate, buyers have not flocked to Europe with the regularity experienced in the past and have started to seek closer to home options. The raging success of Barb Ellison’s program in Oregon goes unquestioned, as does KC Branscomb’s program in the San Francisco area and Tish Quirk in Del Mar. But there is another successful project right in the heart of the Los Angeles area. Rusty and Kandi Stewart have worked over the years to
B
develop a program that produces just a few well bred sport horses each year. Choosing the mare’s very carefully and find- ing just the right stallion to mix the blood lines, their success speaks for itself. But, we digress, it is important first off to know just who
these two are. They are from two extremely different back- grounds that converged at just the right time for the two to meet, and many many years later to marry. RUSTY Rusty was born in New York and began his riding career in
the Leadline classes when he was fifteen months old. “Didn’t everyone start there,” he says with a laugh. “My father, Rus- sell Stewart, was a trainer and it seems then that all of the little kids got put on ponies and into the ring we went! For years my sister Debbie and I just rode horses on the beach, at the ring and anytime we could get a chance to get on one, we did. I first jumped, if you could call it that, when I was eight years old and could barely hang on over the fences. But I sure loved it and it was all I wanted to do.” And hang on he did, learning to master the art of show
jumping at an extremely young age. Showing great hunt- ers when he was twelve and thirteen years old, he rode a fabulous hunter named Little Fiddle to the Regular Work- ing Hunter AHSA Horse of the Year awards; the years were 1960 and 1961. Being accepted to the USET Team training process in 1966,
Rusty and Bristol
he joined Bert DeNemethy at the United State Equestrian Team headquarters in Gladstone, New Jersey. “I learned an awful lot,” says Rusty. “Other than my dad, Bert was my first ‘real’ trainer and he worked my backside off. He also became my mentor and pushed me quite hard at times. He made me want to be better every time I got near a horse.” Life changed for Rusty when the USA drafted him into
the Army in 1968, shipping off during the bad times for our country. His return to the states took him to San Antonio, Texas, to Coach the USA Pentathlon Team. There he made friends with Mason Phelps, Jimmy Wohlford, and Hugh Kinncannon who years later would be instrumental in the direction of the show jumping sport. Discharged from the service, Rusty found himself em-
ployed at Berry Hill Farm in northern California with Jim- my Kohn and his mother Carolyn. When Jimmy relocat- ed south to the LA region, Rusty head south to take over
reeding American show horses has long been a
Top - Rusty and Bristol; Bottom, Left to Right: Rusty as a child; Rusty and Little Fiddle at the New York State Fair; Rusty and Little Fiddle at Madison Square Gardens, 1961.
Photos courtesy Rusty and Kandi Stewart. 51
Photo ©
Horseinsport.com
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