Flashback Friday: Zips White Chip, Troy Compton, and Gerri Leigh Pratt

By: Brittany Bevis

For today’s Flashback Friday we dove into The Equine Chronicle archives to uncover a playful ad series that aired in the September/October 2001 Quarter Horse Congress edition of the magazine. The stars of the campaign were horse trainer Troy Compton, horse owner Gerri Leigh Pratt, and a 1997 sorrel stallion named Zips White Chip.

Zips White Chip is by Zips Chocolate Chip and out of a Sonny Dee Bar daughter named Distant Serenade. In addition to being a Superior earning western pleasure horse and multiple circuit champion, Compton rode Zips White Chip to a Top 5 finish in Junior Western Pleasure at the 2001 Quarter Horse Congress, the same show during which this ad aired.

Compton fondly remembers the performance when he rode Zips White Chip to a fifth place finish out of 115 entries.

“That was the first year I had him,” Compton says. “I fit him for two years, and we were fifth at the Congress that first year I showed him. I was really happy about that.”

“Back in the day, they had so many more entries in the Junior Pleasure. Today, they have it split up into so many more classes, and the horses are lasting longer because you have better built animals. It’s really necessary now, and it helps to encourage more participation, because you may have someone who has been to the show four or five times and never made the cut. It also makes the owner happy that there are other classes to do.”

“It used to be that you’d have 2-Year-Old, 3-Year-Old, Maturity, Junior, and Senior as a competitive western pleasure rider. Now, with divisions like the $10,000 horse, there are a lot of other classes to participate in. I’ve got horses to show in the $10,000 class at the Congress that I’d never show in the Open Maturity, but we would’ve back in the day, because that’s all they had.”

When it came to the decision to have Pratt sit atop Compton’s shoulders to “spray paint” the stallion’s name in graffiti-style across a brick wall, Compton says the pair received a bit of creative instruction from EC Advertising Director Gordon Downey.

“It was actually Gordon’s idea, and he helped put this together,” Compton says. “It was a big inside joke. We were making light of a situation that was going on at the time…”

“Gerri Leigh was one of the premier horse owners of the time and still is. It was kind of an honor having a horse for her. We’ve had other horses together, but this was probably the most publicized.”

Compton remembers first meeting Pratt when he worked for Doug Lilly in the 80s.

“She was as cool as heck,” he says. “She was a good friend then and later on when I was on my own. I always wanted to have a horse for her, and then I found Zips White Chip. She wrote a big check for him, sight unseen, and we went on to win quite a bit of stuff with him.”

Click here to watch a YouTube video featuring Troy Compton and Zips White Chip at the 2001 Quarter Horse Congress. If you have a photo that you think might make for a great Flashback Friday article, send it to b.bevis@equinechronicle.com and you might see it on our website or Facebook page.