Taylor Trade Publishing
Pages: 328
•
Trim: 5¾ x 9
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. The author 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