I watched a few videos from Desert Circuit 2022 where he was the hands down fave to win the one of the big derby’s . The color commentator said the same thing until he came in the ring with a lamentable show, from attitude and performance and ended up with the rider making it a “training session”. I’ve not seen him since.
He was showing up until July 2022. His USEF record stops there.
Where? Any accomplishments? He was a nice enough horse but, in my opinion no where close to “horse of the year” unless folks only look at West coast horses. But, then again, he was the only hunter nominated. Hmmm.
If your question was directed at me.
The last show in the USEF record is at Oaks-Blenheim in July 2022. Earlier that year he’d done Thermal, Temecula, other Oaks shows. I didn’t pull up the record for before 2022 and I didn’t read what I had all that carefully.
I did find this article about the USEF horse of the year. https://www.usef.org/media/press-releases/balou-du-reventon-big-shot-win-2021-horse-of
Is that the award that’s voted on by USEF members? And there’s only one horse nominated for each breed or discipline?
In part. USEF provides a handful of horses for voting consideration in both the International and National categories. The National category competitors are comprised of any/all breeds and disciplines who vie for bragging rights.
I’m quite late to this thread, but the horse stayed overseas with Harry Charles. Harry was announced the new rider recently and Brian, I believe, is riding his own horses and a friend’s horse. Not sure what happened there, but can only infer based on the lack of results they incurred as a duo. Guessing the schooling round was the final straw of sorts.
This thread is about Big Shot, not Balou du Reventon.
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Big Shot was a hunter that showed on the West Coast with a home base at Far West Farms (Kost and Jenny Karrazzis). His owner, Dulcie Lou Morris, rode him in the a/o hunters. I don’t think the horse went any farther away from home than Franktown Meadows in Carson City Nevada.
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Oh, duh 
assume it was Balou from the article link above! The more you know 
No worries. But, I’d still like to know what became of him (Big Shot). Odd that he would just drop off the map. He was the only competitive horse in Far West Farms.
I don’t know anything about this particular horse, but when a good one disappears from sight, my first thought would always be some sort of soundness issue.
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The article mentions a metabolic disorder the year prior, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was experiencing soundness issues from that.
This was the conclusion I had come to after reading the article.
