Heidi Rasor – How A Golf Bet Won A Horse
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34 – November/December, 2024
By Megan Sacia Ulrich
Heidi Rasor is no stranger to winning. She has won World and Congress championships and Reserve championships as far back as 1994. But the most important win in her show career is the one that launched it: a bet with her fiancé, Jack, in 1993. The couple was living on a five-acre horse property in Paradise Valley, Arizona, without any horses, and Heidi had been bugging Jack incessantly about getting a horse. One day after an important golf tournament Jack played in (he finished second) the pair decided to make a bet: if Heidi could hit a golf ball over the desert and land on the green, she could get her horse.
The problem was complicated by the fact that she’d never swung a club in her life. But Heidi is nothing if not focused, determined, and passionate, so she swung that club like an old pro. Jack says that is still the most expensive bet he’s ever lost.
As a kid, Heidi spent her early years surrounded by horses and other farm animals at her grandparents’ 40-acre ranch in Prescott, Arizona. She and her grandpa would go on frequent rides and she says, “I was hooked at a very early age.” Heidi’s dad was active-duty Army, so at age seven, she had to say goodbye to the horses and Arizona to move to Germany. He was stationed there for six years. When the family moved back to Arizona, it didn’t take long for 13-year-old Heidi to buy herself a Quarter Horse mare. She and a friend would spend hours in the saddle riding through the Indian Reservation in Scottsdale. When life got busy, she sold her horse, but she knew she’d never lose her passion for horses.
After winning that bet against Jack, she purchased Ima Platinum Leaguer. While she was making final wedding preparations, Heidi showed Ima Platinum Leaguer that year and won Reserve in Novice Amateur Horsemanship at the Congress. Heidi and Jack married that same year and added another horse to their herd–a little chestnut mare named Skip Town Cindy. Two years later, Heidi won her first World Show silver globe in Amateur Trail. The pair also showed in Horse-manship and Western Riding with huge success. “Cindy” lived the rest of her life with Heidi and passed away at age 30. Heidi says she still misses that little horse every day.
Click here to read the complete article
34 – November/December, 2024