Subtitled, The True Story of the Youngest Female Tevis Cup Champion, CHASING DREAMS by Sanomna Blakeley is made for horse lovers and anyone who wants reassurance that the young generation is not all glued to screens. This thrilling memoir is just what young Sanoma Blakeley did all her life, with a trail-riding family who trained horses to sell, in order to fund their obsession with competitive riding in endurance races.
Sanoma tells us how she competed as early as she was able, and tackled the much-coveted endurance crown of the Tevis Cup early, following the strict rules. This race requires anyone under 18 to ride alongside a sponsoring adult all the way. Wait for it, the race is to cover 100 miles in 24 hours, over a historic route across mountains, rivers, and canyons. The horses are vetted at several set stages before they are allowed to advance to the next part. A website updates and tracks progress for the support teams. Most participating mounts are Arabs or Anglo-Arabs, with a few Mustangs. I had not known much about this elite sport, but Sanoma explains how the mounts are selected, trained, and eased in with a race of 25 or 30 miles at first.
In 2019, aged 18, Sonoma won the Tevis Cup in a close finish with one of the best professional champions. She describes her partnership with Goober, a young horse given away free on Craigslist, proper name RA Ares Bey. Not everyone could have overcome his health issues and turned him into an endurance riding champion. Her accounts of crossing the rugged Sierra Nevadas and fording the American River will be ingrained in my memory. But the events which followed the sale of loyal Goober really impressed on me that some people do not deserve good horses. Or any horses. I’ll reassure readers that Goober eventually returned to his happy home, through the efforts of the Blakeley family.
CHASING DREAMS is a brilliant book about the outdoors, sports, and achievement. Sonoma Blakeley tells, and demonstrates, how success is about preparation, determination, and team effort, but most of all about showing up to do the work. She has come a long way already, and I am certain she will go a long way further in the future.
The Thrilling and Emotional Memoir from Endurance Horse Racing Legend Sanoma Blakeley
Chasing Dreams: The True Story of the Youngest Female Tevis Cup Champion is the incredible, action-packed memoir of Sanoma Blakeley’s 2019 Tevis Cup championship, won while riding her beloved horse Goober, and the tale of how she became the youngest woman to ever become a Tevis Cup champion. Beginning her endurance riding career at the age of seven, Blakeley writes about the years of training and teamwork required to win the most challenging and famous 100-mile horse race in the world aboard a horse she had originally acquired for free off of Craigslist.
Blakeley places readers on the ride with her so that they can experience the thrill of the most exciting horse endurance race in existence. Blakeley and Goober survive narrow mountain trails winding through the Sierra-Nevadas, containing over 19,000 feet of elevation gain; three steep, grueling canyons; crossing the shoulder-high American River; riding at night with only the light of the moon to guide them; temperatures that soared over 115 degrees; and, most excitingly, the final neck-and-neck sprint to the finish against a four-time Tevis Cup champion and world class competitor after 100 miles of some of the most rugged mountain trails in the world.
When Blakeley and Goober cross the finish line just a few feet ahead of their competition and Blakeley becomes the youngest woman in history to win the Tevis Cup, a lifetime of hard work that began when the author started training as a small child and who had long dreamed of winning the Tevis Cup was finally rewarded. Chasing Dreams contains action, heartwarming twists, and an epic ending that will leave readers in tears.
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