The First One: 1974 AQHA World Show

It has been 50 years now since the first AQHA world champions were crowned. Fifty years ago, AQHA staffers and volunteers were preparing for a special event – the first-ever AQHA World Championship Show.

Photo for the First World Show Journal blog.

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October 17, 2024 | News and Publications , Showing | Showing

By Jim Jennings

Fifty years ago, AQHA staffers and volunteers were preparing for a special event – the first-ever AQHA World Championship Show.

Technology at the show was top of the line for the time. World Show results would be tabulated over a telephone line that linked a Radio Shack personal computer to a bank of IBM computers in the Dayton, Ohio, offices of show sponsor Ponderosa Steak Houses. The Radio Shack computer was packed and checked as luggage when AQHA staff flew to Louisville, Kentucky, where the show would be held.

However, airport personnel dropped the box containing the computer, rendering it worthless.

Ponderosa came to the rescue and furnished a replacement computer. Judges’ results were entered, and results appeared immediately on a large video screen. Incidentally, the following year, AQHA’s computer was packed on a bed of shavings in the front stall of AQHA inspector Jim Wright’s two-horse inline trailer.

Get more behind-the-scenes stories from the first World Show in the September-October issue of The American Quarter Horse Journal and the 2024 AQHA World Championship Show Souvenir Program.