Gude Affair Recognized as Sport Horse of the Year

The Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association announced Aug. 6 that Gude Affair, owned and ridden by Allison Smith, is the recipient of the 2025 Rood & Riddle Sport Horse of the Year Award. The award will be presented during the TOBA National Awards Dinner Sept. 10 at The Kentucky Castle in Versailles, Ky., where TOBA will recognize outstanding achievements in Thoroughbred breeding, racing, and sport horse competition. The following BloodHorse profile spotlights Gude Affair: The road from the racetrack to the show-jumping ring isn’t often paved with gold. But in the case of Allison Smith and Gude Affair—barn name “Roo”—the path glitters. From a young age, Virginia-bred Smith showed a strong affinity for horses. Involved in Pony Club and Yng Riders, Smith then “worked for (event rider) Lynn Symansky and her Thoroughbred at the time was ‘Donner’ and I was his groom for a long time. So I think that definitely highlighted Thoroughbreds for me for sure.” Eventing at the FEI levels in her late teens, she continued through college. Thirteen years ago, Smith fell in love with a handsome 3-year-old gelding who turned out to be Roo. Like many Thoroughbreds, Roo has a unique personality, but Smith has kept working with him through eventing, dressage, and now show jumping. That last-named sport has been Roo’s true calling. “The past few years have been incredible with him,” Smith said. “We did a bunch of meter-20s; we did meter-10, meter-15s, and he was just tearing it up. He was loving it.” Smith mused, “I think last year, really, my confidence on him grew, just from the different things we tried. I was like, ‘He's the horse of a lifetime, obviously. I'm never going to have another one like him. I want to try everything with him that I possibly can.’ Obviously, he was fifteen last year; he's sixteen now. He's not going to get any younger. So last year I decided that I was going to try everything I could with him. So we did all the different classics I could find, and we went to different shows. We went up to Chagrin, Ohio, and we won there, and we tried our first Mini Prix, and we went down to Tryon, and I just took him everywhere. And we did the Zone Finals things, and we won there. And I think just trying all these different things besides just going to the same local shows around here, I think he loved it too.” Smith and her wife participated in the 2025 Warrenton Horse Show Hunt Night. Smith kept an eye on her wife during the event, and Roo helped her out. She realized that her focus was elsewhere, and “the entire time I was literally probably not even steering him, just sitting on him, and he did the entire thing for me because I'm watching her behind me the whole time. So I don't know; he's just so special—just the trust that I have in him for every single thing that we try.”