Taylor Trade Publishing
Pages: 336
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-58979-379-8 • Hardback • August 2008 • $24.95 • (£18.99)
978-1-58979-958-5 • Paperback • July 2014 • $16.95 • (£12.99)
978-1-58979-411-5 • eBook • August 2008 • $9.99 • (£7.99)
Richard R. Rust was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, a practicing civil engineer, and an amateur sportsman. As a child, he rode his tricycle under Fitz’s belly and started riding ponies at age four. His mother, Jane Pohl, is the subject of this book, and his father, D. N. Rust III, was an amateur steeplechase trainer and rider with two wins of the Virginia Gold Cup. He died in 2008.
Foreword by Rita Mae Brown
Part I
Chapter 1: Jump-Off in the Big League
Chapter 2: Independent to the End
Chapter 3: A Good Horse Turns Outlaw
Chapter 4: Learning from Calvary Sergeants
Chapter 5: A Death Sentence from Jane
Chapter 6: Lost in Transit
Chapter 7: Drowning in Quicksand
Part II
Chapter 8: Honeysuckle to Skyscrapers: Fitz’s Debut
Chapter 9: Against All Odds: The 1946 National
Chapter 10: The “Young Girls” Take on the Pros
Chapter 11: Horse Sense Deserts Jane
Chapter 12: In the Spotlight
Chapter 13: Shotgun Wedding
Chapter 14: The Way Out
Chapter 15: From the Garden to the Pasture
Part III
Chapter 16: Sowing Seeds
Chapter 17: An Empty Stall
Chapter 18: The Investigation
Chapter 19: Last Class
Chapter 20: The Next Great Adventure
Those of us who come from older generations cannot but admire what the late Col. Richard Rust achieved in producing, as a true labor of love, such a touching tribute to his mother. [We] will also be grateful to him for having evoked so many fond old horse-show memories.
— William Steinkraus, four-time Olympic medal winner
Renegade Champion is honest, compelling, and sometimes bittersweet.
— In and Around Horse Country
This true story reads like a Hollywood script but better. Unlike many biographies, this one is decorated with anecdotes that only a child would pick up through a lifetime spent with his mother. He does a masterful job of relating facts and blending them with these wonderful tidbits, so that the reader seems to feel what's going through Pohl's mind rather than simply reading her words.
— The Chronicle Of The Horse
Renegade Champion: The Unlikely Rise of Fitzrada is a fitting tribute to Jane Pohl and the horse that propelled her to the top of the male-dominated jumper circuit of the 1940s. It’s an extraordinary treat to go back in time when prized show horses were actually working hunters, to a world where Thoroughbreds were exalted, and to big indoor shows being covered nationally in newspapers. But more than that readers will easily relate to her frustrations and triumphs of a horse crazy girl, showing on a shoestring budget, rubbing and grooming herself and training a horse that doesn’t have a blue-blooded pedigree—it’s all there in vivid detail as if Jane wrote the book herself.
— Retired Racehorse blog