page_title: Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration
section_title: Notable winners
hierarchical_section_title: Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration / History / Notable winners
caption_attribution_description: English: Midnight Sun (1940-1965), world champion Tennessee Walking Horse. See Midnight Sun
context_page_description: The Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, sometimes known as the Celebration, is the largest horse show for the Tennessee Walking Horse breed, and has been held annually in or near Shelbyville, Tennessee since its inception in 1939.
  The Celebration was conceived by Henry Davis, a horse trainer who along with several other horsemen, felt the Shelbyville area should have a festival or annual event. Although the Celebration was originally held in Wartrace, Tennessee, it moved to Shelbyville, the seat of Bedford County, a few years later. The Celebration spans 11 days and nights in late August and early September annually, and finishes with the crowning of the World Grand Champion Tennessee Walker on the Saturday night before Labor Day. The TWHNC draws an estimated 2,000 horses and 250,000 spectators to Shelbyville each year.
context_section_description: The first horse to be named World Grand Champion was Strolling Jim in 1939. Strolling Jim was a former plow horse retrained for show by Floyd Carothers and Henry Davis, and was only three years old at the time of his win. 
  Although Strolling Jim was a gelding, many World Grand Champions were stallions who became notable sires. Midnight Sun, winner in 1945 and 1946, sired over 2,600 foals, of which five became World Grand Champions. Midnight Sun was ridden and trained by Fred Walker, and owned by Harlinsdale Farm. The World Grand Champion in 1947 and 1948, Merry Go Boy, was known for producing the most desirable Tennessee Walker conformation type in his offspring, as well as his "duel" with Midnight Sun when he tried to defeat the older horse in 1946. The stake is traditionally a stallions' class, and has not been won by a mare or gelding since 1954, when the gray mare Garnier's White Star, owned by W.V. Garnier and ridden by Percy Moss, was crowned as the World Grand Champion. Incidentally, 23-year-old Moss was also the youngest rider to win the stake at the time. The first female rider to win the World Grand Championship was Betty Sain on Shaker's Shocker in 1966.
  Sain had previously competed in the four-year-old age division and was expected to win the World Championship in that division, but she bypassed the class in favor of the World Grand Championship. The oldest rider to win was 81-year-old Bud Dunn on RPM in 1999. Dunn had previously been the oldest winning rider with Dark Spirit's Rebel in 1992, at the age of 74.  Although there have been six horses who won the stake two years consecutively, there have been only two three-time winners in the history of the Celebration: The Talk of the Town in 1951, 1952 and 1953, and I Am Jose in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I Am Jose was also notable for being the first four-year-old winner since 1966.
caption: Midnight Sun, two-time winner of the World Grand Championship
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