Ooltewah rider-trainer Shannon Betts rides Crimson N Color – also known as “Remi” – in his first Grand
Prix dressage competiton last fall in Fayetteville, Tenn.Yankee Stadium in New York was “the house that Ruth built,” based on the home run excitement and fan interest generated by Babe Ruth.
The magnificent Hayes Equestrian Center in Collegedale rightly could be called “the house that Remi built,” and the master of that palace, the Half Arabian Half Saddlebred officially known as Crimson N Color, keeps earning his special attention.
“Remi” — short for Rembrandt — is the barn name for Crimson N Color, who is wintering in Florida and not unlike Ruth in his day will be back in March for a season beginning in April.
“We built it basically for him,” owner Cynthia Hayes said of the facility where she boards other horses belonging to friends. “When we first got Remi we just had this little bitty barn with two stalls, but this place — you have to see it to believe it. We even have a dressage arena modeled after the Kentucky Horse Park.”
After winning three national dressage titles in the fall of 2011 at that arena in Lexington, Ky. — in Prix St. George and Intermediate 1 and as the all-breeds champion — Crimson N Color broke his left hind splint bone and did not compete at all in 2012. But he returned in February 2013 at a show in Florida and then won his last Intermediate 1 regional, and Prix St. George honors also, in May at Perry, Ga.