Joanie preparing Ty for the Ocala HT
In some unexpected high performance news, Titanium’s owners Buck Davidson and Carl and Cassandra Segal have made the decision to switch riders for the talented grey gelding. Joanie Morris, who as many of you know is the USEF’s Director of Communications, has gotten the ride and is competing Titanium at training level this weekend at the Ocala horse trials. Titanium has competed at multiple three and four star competitions with Buck, including two appearances at Rolex and most recently an 11th place finish at the Galway CCI3*.
As the story goes, Joanie found Titanium many moons ago for Buck at the Camden, South Carolina steeple chase races. Titanium didn’t quite have the speed to be a good timber horse and Joanie called Buck with the recommendation. Buck bought Titanium through Joanie sight unseen and the rest is, as they say, history.
Joanie and Buck have been joking about Joanie taking “Ty” to one competition just for fun since that day. Joanie told me that Ty looked so good after Galway that Buck asked Joanie to send him her USEA info for the Ocala entry. Joanie said “I thought he was kidding.”
Joanie said that Titanium is a really cool horse and that she’s just hoping to give him a good ride this weekend. As Joanie said, Ty is one of the kindest and sweetest horses you will ever meet.
Also, Joanie insisted that I give a shout-out to Bill Wofford. Bill lives in Lexington and gave Joanie a horse to ride last week to practice up for her catch ride on Ty. In case you were wondering, Bill is Jimmy Wofford’s cousin. Buck will of course get the ride back on Ty after this weekend.
We’re wishing major EN Karma to Joanie and Ty as well as all of the other horses and riders at the Ocala HT. We want to thank an EN tipster who might or might not ride in yellow and red for giving us a heads up on the story. If you have fun stories like this, please send them our way to [email protected].
Go Titanium and Joanie.
