Sara Simons Wins Her First Senior Trail Congress Championship

On Thursday, October 19th at the 2023 All American Quarter Horse Congress, in a huge L2 Senior Trail class, which was split out separately as a class on its own this year, Sara Simons piloted Beyond Expectation to a win, and it was an impressive win at that, considering there were 98 teams who showed.

Their final score was 245, and Sara was excited to win her first Senior Trail class at the Congress!

“I’m so excited and I was so shocked,” explains Sara.  “He belongs to Lila Owens from Florida, and I’ve only had him about a year and a half, but he won the World last year in Green Western Riding and he was Reserve here in the L2 Western Riding.  He’s just an awesome horse with a great mind, he’s super easy to zip in and zip out, he’s a full double so he’s done well on the Paint circuit also.”

Marshall, a 7-year-old by Machine Made, she explains he has a huge personality.  “He’s all about the treats, and all the attention needs to be on him all the time, but he deserves it, he’s a special horse.”  She adds that Marshall did well for Lila at Congress in the Showmanship the other day, he has Trail with her Friday, and maybe Equitation, too, as a horse who is very versatile.

“He’s done well in our program, and we really love him,” says Sara, who shares that they are going on with Marshall to the World Show.

Sara explains that the pattern was very technical and she likes that, plus she knew Marshall would go out there and show well.  “He has a lot of expression, and from a judging standpoint, I think that’s special in a horse, some of them have it, some of them don’t. He’s just happy to do his job.”

Sara judged the class here last year when it was combined with the L3 Senior Trail, and it was so large, they had to spread it over two days.  “It’s really not ideal, and they made it fair with lasers to assure it was fair and set exactly the same,” she says. She says having the L2 by itself will only make it bigger, and since it takes a lot to get a horse into the L3, there were a lot of high caliber horses in there.

Lila, who showed Marshall here in the Non Pro 2 Year Old class, has this to say, “ I’ve had him since he was a 2 year old, and I don’t see him going anywhere anytime soon!”

Results for L2 Senior Trail: