Lexington, Ky.—Aug. 14

It’s a situation you never want to be in as a rider—the morning of your biggest show of the year is just days away, and something’s not right with your pony. It’s the situation Caroline Passarelli found herself in at this year’s U.S. Pony Finals—something she had worked toward all year, and the pony she had brought to Lexington to compete with wasn’t feeling his best.

So Passarelli did what was best for the pony—she left him back in the barns to rest up and fight another day, and then she swung a leg over a pony she’d never seen before and rode to the top of a class of 163 entries.

“I’m feeling incredible, and I have to start by thanking the Champey family and Annabella Sanchez so much for lending me [the pony] at the very last minute,” Passarelli, 14, said. “Without them it would not be possible.”

“They really came to rescue,” Patricia Griffith, Passarelli’s trainer out of Heritage Farm in Katonah, N.Y., said. “They just stepped right up and said ‘We’re here for you and if you need us let us know.’ It was unbelievable the generosity on their part to just step right in. It was so nice, it moved me.”

Caroline Passarelli (center) embraces trainer Patricia Griffith (right) as Dottie Barnwell-Areson looks on after they learned she won the U.S. Pony Medal. Photo by Ann Glavan.

The pony Passarelli ended up competing aboard was News Flash—a medium pony, owned by Sanchez, who earned the reserve championship title in the regular medium division Saturday with Hunter Champey in the irons. Griffith had News Flash in her barn as a green pony, so she knew him fairly well, but Passerelli had never sat on him before. She also didn’t have the advantage nearly all the other competitors did of riding their ponies over a warm up round in the Alltech Arena.

“She had never jumped the course on him. I knew he would be brave and straight forward, but he likes to go a little right, so I just said have fun, put your right leg on,” Griffith said with a laugh. “But we knew he was going to be true blue and not let us down.”

Passarelli went 15^th in the original order of 163 riders, and she left nothing on the table with opening round, clocking around the course confidently from stride one.

“He was so great, he has such an even canter that once you get the rhythm you can really keep it all the way around,” Passarelli said. “He really got to go forward right to the first jump, and I think that really caught the judges eye. You could kind of let him open up.”

Caroline Passarelli hugs News Flash after she won the U.S. Pony Medal. Photo by Ann Glavan.

The strategy Passarelli rattles off in a matter-of-fact fashion sounds so easy, but anyone who has watched a pony equitation class can tell you how difficult it can be to find the happy medium between a forward pony that finds the jumps out of stride and something more akin to a rushing, albeit adorable, pony steeple chase.

Passerelli managed to make News Flash look like a miniature ASPCA Maclay Finals horse, opening his stride and flowing seamlessly around the course. Her call back round over fences matched her opening performance, and the judges called back both her and Augusta Iwasaki to test on the flat before pinning them champion and reserve, respectively.

“I thought everything was really inviting o the course, there were a lot of nice turns but the pony landed almost all his leads and he was wonderful and really accepting of everything,” Passerelli said.

Of course if there was any rider you would bet on to be unfazed by catch riding a pony medal final, it would be Passarelli. Since coming to Heritage Farm from Robin Greenwood’s program two years ago, Passarelli has catch rode more ponies than she can count.

“Caroline is a working student, so it’s very important to me, since I was a working student myself, that I could really give her every opportunity to do well and get her the best ride we could, even if it was the last second,” Griffith said. “Because she really makes the most out of it.”

Caroline Passarelli. Photo by Kimberly Loushin.

Augusta Iwasaki showed Kingston to second in the Pony Medal. Photo by Kimberly Loushin.

Christina Rogalny rode to third. Photo by Kimberly Loushin.

Phoebe Topping took fourth. Photo by Kimberly Loushin.

Find full results for the show here.

Stay tuned to www.coth.com for all the news from U.S. Pony Finals. Read all about Makenna Nastri who’s been galloping around the horse park bareback, Bailey Lones and her Half-Arabian, Baylee McKeever who has some big fans watch from Rio, Riley Hogan who made her way to Kentucky via the hunt field and the division winners in hunters and jumpers.