Sharon White’s
By Amber Heintzberger
competitor, Rafferty’s Rules (an Australian Warmblood gelding by Salute) is ready to make his comeback from injury. She also has two extremely talented and well-bred young Warmbloods starting out at the upper levels, each potential world-class competitors, along with a cadre of promising youngsters coming up the ranks behind them. Sharon owns and operates Last Frontier Farm in
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Summit Point, West Virginia and has many successful horses and students to her credit. She is a popular figure in eventing: she is down to earth, hard-working and talented. Loud cheers rise from the crowds that flank the galloping lanes on some of the biggest cross-country venues in the world as her distinctive, bright orange cross-country colors gallop past. But her blossoming eventing career hasn’t come easily.
Accidents and Setbacks Sharon has overcome major bumps along the way to her current success. In 2005 a bad schooling accident sent her to the emergency room, where doctors discovered that her pelvis was shattered—separated from her spine—and her sacrum was fractured. After six months in a wheelchair she sat on a horse again, extremely fortunate that she was not paralyzed from the injury. During this time her mother Carol, a strong sup-
porter of Sharon’s passion for eventing, was battling cancer. Then in 2009, on her way to Stuart Horse Trials in New York with five horses, a dump truck ran a red light and ploughed into Sharon’s trailer, fortunately hitting the gooseneck and leaving the horses on board uninjured, but her truck and trailer were demolished. With the support of the eventing community Sharon was able to get back on her feet and move forward
22 July/August 2013
Armed with her string of Warmbloods, this eventer does not discourage easily even after some serious injuries.
f Warmblood and Warmblood crosses are the future of eventing, then Sharon White’s future is looking mighty bright. Her top
again, but it didn’t take long for the next catastrophe to strike. In 2010 she had another rotational fall
with a two-star horse at Fair Hill, just after she had completed the Blenheim three-star in England with Rafferty’s Rules. Again her pelvis was broken, as well as her hip. “I just thought there was no way—light- ning doesn’t strike twice! I kept saying, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’ I couldn’t get up, but I was still insisting I was fine. When they told me in the
ER that I’d have to have surgery, I still insisted that I was fine and needed to go home!” Sharon exclaims. “So twice now I’ve managed to mush my body. Luckily, since it had happened before, I knew what to do—I just continued physical therapy and got stronger and stronger.” Undeterred from her passion for riding, she says with
a laugh, “I’m really hoping that the super jumping horses I’m riding now will protect me in the future. I used to ride anything…now, not so much!”
Ideal Event Horse Though she has been riding more Warmbloods since her injury, Sharon says this is simply a matter of the horses that have come to her. If a good Thoroughbred came along, she would be equally as excited to climb aboard. Does she think that Warmbloods are the future of eventing? Yes and no: “I think that there are always anomalies and it really depends on the individual horse. I would consider a horse that is 75 percent Thoroughbred to be ‘textbook ideal’ for eventing. But so much more than breeding goes into the final product of what a horse will end up being able to do, such as how they are brought along.” She points out that 2013 Rolex Kentucky CCI4* winner
Andrew Nicholson’s horse Quimbo is not of classical eventing breeding, but the strongly built, black Caballo de Deporte Español (Spanish Sport Horse) gelding clearly
lastfrontierfarm.com
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