Tulsa, OK - On Friday, October 21, the 45th Annual Arabian National Championship Show begins at the Tulsa Expo Square in Tulsa, OK. The show runs for nine days, through Saturday evening, October 29. It’s the fourth year for this major national equine event in Tulsa, OK. Arabian and Half-Arabian horses hailing from most of the 48 states and Canada will fill the barns, warm-up arenas and wash racks for the next few weeks, while their owners, trainers and grooms enjoy Oklahoma’s warm Indian Summer weather. Entries are up from 2010 by over 150 horses, bringing show totals to nearly 1800 and inspiring enthusiasm from show management and horsemen alike. Six panels, numbering between two and five judges each, will adjudicate the show’s 218 classes, almost 50 of them brand new for the 2011 show.

Fifty brand new national classes? It’s the most the show has added at one time in several decades. The new classes include around 40 directly related to in-hand competition. What were once two classes, U.S. National Champion Mare and U.S. National Champion Stallion, have now grown into National Championship designations for Purebred and Half-Arabian yearlings, two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four and five-year-olds, six and seven-year-olds and eight and over, complete with roses and ribbons for all. At the end of the national show week a Halter “grand champion” will be chosen for both a Junior and Senior National Champion title.

The first two Arabian National Championship classes ever held in America were for the 1958 U.S. National Champion Mare and National Champion Stallion. These two classes were initially held in conjunction with the Estes Park Show in Colorado. After five years in Colorado the show went to Dallas, Texas and Springfield, Illinois for two years apiece. Then the U.S. National Championships went to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1967 and 1968, after which the show moved to Oklahoma City for five years, before returning to Albuquerque in 1974 and 1975. After 1975 the show alternated between Louisville and Albuquerque for over thirty years before it was moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2008. Over the years the class numbers grew, included performance and then gradually added more and more competition. In fact, the show has added several classes per year for as long as anyone can remember. In addition to the popular Halter, divisions now include Hunter, Western, English and Country Pleasure, Side Saddle, Native Costume, Driving, Trail, Reining, Working Cow Horse, Cutting, Futurity and Junior Horse classes. With the exception of the last two divisions, most of these classes offer both open and amateur competition. Arabian youth riders and Sport Horses now have their own national shows earlier in the calendar year.

Over the last half decade the U.S. National show has lost little of its prestige and color. Major breeding and show horses rise in popularity, are retired and then replaced by their sons and daughters, trainers and owners come and go and often come back again, but the show has remained a constant. It has always been the most important competition for Arabian horses in North America and certainly, a national championship rose blanket or a Top Ten plaque awarded at the U.S. Arabian and Half-Arabian National Championships ranks among the most important and coveted horse show credentials in the world.