Dont Look Twice follows long line of success to surpass Meradas Little Sue’s record.
“I do remember,” said Phil Rapp, 43, a career earner of more than $8.1 million as a National Cutting Horse Association rider, when asked if he remembered what it felt like to ride his first special horse.
Tapeppyoka Peppy (Doc’s Oak x Senorita Peppy x Mr San Peppy), the chestnut 1980 mare Rapp started riding when he was 14 in 1984, definitely crossed his mind Oct. 12 in Columbus, Ohio. Rapp and the 7-year-old great-granddaughter of “Tap” whom he refers to as “Lipstick” or “Lippy,” due to her white lip markings, finished as Reserve Champions that night in the NCHA/Mercuria Open World Series of Cutting.
A 223.5 score earned them $7,404. That also gave the 2007 mare officially known as Dont Look Twice (High Brow Cat x Tapt Twice x
Dual Pep) $736,503 in career cutting earnings. Another strong finish in a remarkable fouryear string pushed the 2011 NCHA Open Horse of the Year, bred by Phil and his wife, Mary Ann Rapp, and owned by Waco Bend Ranch, Graham, Texas, past the $730,552 record for mares.
The record had stood since 2000, when 1990 mare Meradas Little Sue (Freckles Merada x Doc’s Hickory Sue x Doc’s Hickory) retired. Meradas Little Sue, bred by Kenneth and Kathy Galyean, Bentonville, Ark., earned three NCHA Open World Championship titles in the 1990s with her trainer Kobie Wood, Stephenville, Texas, while owned by Houston, Texas, businessman Bill Heiligbrodt. She has remained a productive broodmare for Frank VanderSloot, Nampa, Idaho, since the day he bought her in 2001 at a Fort Worth sale for a still-record price for a mare, $875,000.
Twenty Meradas Little Sue foals had combined to earn more than $1.1 million as cutters heading into mid-October, according to Equi-Stat.
Tapeppyoka Peppy died early and unexpectedly at 16. She still produced one outstanding earner (Tap O Lena), after she started cutting’s top-earning rider, Rapp, off on the right foot. She personally carried him to $124,077 in earnings during his mid-to-late teens. That included his first win, a 1985 American Junior Quarter Horse Association title earned soon after Phil’s parents bought her. She then launched his multigenerational winning streak as a cutting breeder that he’s still riding today.
