Tulsa, OK – The Standardbred world knew Homicide Hunter as a record-breaker: the fastest male trotter in history, a 1:48.4 winner at The Red Mile in the Allerage Trot, and a horse who earned over $1.7 million on the racetrack. Now, the rest of the horse world knows him as something else entirely: a World Champion show horse.
Competing at the PtHA World Championship Show, Homicide Hunter won one World Championship title and two Reserve World Championship titles in the Amateur English division, facing horses from the mainstream stock-horse world, including Quarter Horses, Paints, Appaloosas, and other traditional show breeds. The win marks the first time a Standardbred has captured a major stock-show world title, a milestone that reaches far beyond one horse, one class, or one show ring.
“Homicide Hunter carried more than himself into that ring,” said Michelle Panebianco, a partner in Homicide Hunter through Crawford Farms Racing and an MMXX program sponsor through Deja Blu Stables. “He carried every Standardbred that has ever been overlooked because someone thought they did not belong. This win tells the riding world that Standardbreds are not charity cases. They are athletes. They are partners. They are competitors. And they deserve a place in the ring.”
Homicide Hunter is owned by Crawford Farms Racing and trained by MMXX Standardbreds. His historic performance at PtHA Worlds has sparked widespread media attention across the show-horse community, particularly among Quarter Horse and stock-breed audiences and publications including The Equine Chronicle, Pinto Horse Magazine and BetterHorses TV Program, where many are seeing Standardbreds in a new light for the first time. One of his performances at the Championship Show has been viewed over 320,000 times at the time of this publication…