Source:  http://www.aqha.com/showing/shows/selectshow/2007winningrun/horsemanship.html (video interview)

Preliminary Round Had 56 Entries 

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Mark Wattier grew up playing football, basketball and baseball, making the all-district teams in his home state of Texas .

He played basketball at Baylor University , but after entering a career in academia as a political science professor, he thought those competitive days were memories. The Murray State University community knows Wattier as a political science professor, but the horse world knows him as the American Quarter Horse Association Bayer Select World Champion in western horsemanship.

“Here I’ve returned to athletics but on a horse,” said Wattier, who lives on a small farm south of Lone Oak with his wife, Debbie, and horse, Matt.

Wattier entered the American Quarter Horse Association competition circuit after his daughter, Rachel, began showing horses. He had told Rachel, then a child, that if she got a hit in her softball game, he would buy her a horse. Riding lessons soon ensued, but Wattier was beginning to get hooked. Rachel is now married and completing medical school at Yale University .

“I would watch her and pick up some tips,” he said. “I started riding horses. It became apparent that we couldn’t ride the same horse, so we ended up with two horses.”

Rachel, though, retired from her horse-showing career at age 13, but rather than the family selling all the horses and equipment, Wattier took up the sport. He began riding and showing horses. Wattier began competing on Dynamic Loverboy, also known as Romeo, at the AQHA world championships in 2000.

When he bought Matt, whose registered name is Too Hot to Pass Up, he continued on the competition circuit, showing the horse in local and regional events to qualify for the AQHA championships.

“You’re up against pretty good competition in horsemanship,” he said.

Ever a competitor, Wattier employed a trainer to help him and the horse perform better. His work with trainers helped improve his skills, leading him to a third place finish last year and the championship this year. The Bayer Select is open to competitors over age 50.

“It’s a victory for us old fogeys still riding,” Wattier, 56, said.

Entering the finals, Wattier and Matt were in seventh place. “If you look at the preliminary placings, typically people don’t jump from seventh to first,” he said. “Dave (Dellin, the trainer) said I’d have to do an exceptionally good job in riding to move from seventh to first. We had worked on that and worked on that really hard.”

Trainer Dave Dellin said Wattier and Matt knew the patterns. “Mark just did a phenomenal job,” he said.

Wattier and Matt practiced spins, rollbacks and speed before the show. Horsemanship requires the rider and horse to perform a drill in a pattern and ride along the rail of the ring.

Loosening up his mind and muscles helped him have a better ride. He said he imagined having his spurs retired into the Quarter Horse Hall of Fame so that his future grandchildren could see them. “The point of this is to get you to focus on your ride and not be distracted by the environment and competition,” he said. “If you focus, you do much better.”

Once his ride ended, he sensed the performance was good enough for a victory. When the reserve winner’s name, Eileen Cravens and horse Lopin Leaguer, was called, he knew his ride had been the best it could be.

His wife, Debbie, had stayed home from the show in Amarillo , Texas , this time, but she watched it online and immediately called him on his cell phone.

“One of the key things about this is that I wasn’t a natural rider to begin with,” Wattier said. “I was just persistent.”

Matt, a gentle giant of a horse at 16.3 hands tall, is in Sanger , Texas , for training lessons at Dellin’s hand as Wattier branches out into trail and western riding. “This is a talented enough horse to do events on a world stage,” he said. “It took a long time to build the horsemanship to this level.”

And since Matt is so tall, he’s a perfect fit for the 6-foot-5-inch Wattier. “When we’re together, we look normal,” he said. “You want a horse to match the rider.”