When a new Tennessee walking horse arrived on Jack Way’s farm 19 months ago, Way’s first inclination was to send the horse back.

He had seen the dapple-gray stallion eight years earlier when it won a World Grand Championship in Shelbyville, Tenn.

But the horse that came off the trailer that cold day in February hardly resembled a champion. He’d been put out to pasture for stud service and hadn’t competed in show competition in eight years.

“When we got him, he was about 350 pounds overweight,” Way said. “He had a woolly coat, no grooming.”

“It looked like a Welch pony, he was so round and fat,” said Johnny “Butch” Lewis, a trainer at Way’s 5 Way Farm in Coaling.

The fact that the horse wasn’t wearing the trademark platform shoes that help accentuate the steps of Tennessee walkers made him look even shorter and heavier.

“We went upstairs and found some shoes and put on the first ones we found,” Lewis said.

From there, it was just a few trips down to the barn before Way and Lewis, who had been working with Tennessee walkers for 25 years, knew the horse was Silver Design, winner of the Amateur 4 Year Old Grand Championship in 1993.

“We could see that the athletic potential he had shown years earlier was still there,” Way said.

With a rigid diet and training program, what transpired during the next 18 months was one of the greatest comeback stories in Tennessee walking horse/shistory.

Last month, after dropping more than 300 pounds, Silver Design and rider Thad Way won the Owner-Amateur Youth Riders on Ponies 60 inches and Under World Grand Championship. Thad Way is Jack Way’s 17-year-old son.

The competition was held in Shelbyville at an event known as The Celebration, the World Series of walking horse competition.

“To come back in a different division with a different rider, from the standpoint of that long of a layoff, it’s a pretty big story,” said Mark McGee, who has/scovered the Tennessee Walking Horse industry for 20 years. He is editor of the Times-Gazette in Shelbyville, known as the Tennessee Walking Horse Capital of the World.

Although The Celebration awarded World Grand Championships in 31 classes, Silver Design and his rider put on a standout performance.

“That horse made an incredible showing, and that young man did an absolutely incredible job of presenting him,” said Bob Cherry, executive director of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association. “It was just, in my mind, one of the top four or five horses in The Celebration.”

Throughout the competition, Thad literally had the voice of his father in his ear, with Way dispensing directions from a remote receiver into a headset his son was wearing.

For Way, a 44-year-old Tuscaloosa insurance agent, the event was the high point in a hobby that began at age 6 when his father, recovering from heart surgery, bought a few horses as a way to bring himself and his son together.

“Emotionally, it was probably my greatest victory in the horse business to see a kid of mine win it,” said Way, who himself had won two championships as a youth.

Way’s father died in 1986. But Way has continued the family’s Tennessee Walking Horse tradition with Thad and his other sons, Winston, 19, William, 11 and Alex, 9.

Today, Way’s 40-acre farm is home to 120 Tennessee Walkers. Some are owned by him while others are boarded there for breeding or training purposes.

What began as a small hobby is now a big business, all based on devotion to one breed of horse with a peculiar birthright.

“What makes the Walking Horse a performance horse is what’s called the running walk, which is the perception that he’s running with his front legs and walking with his back legs,” Way said. “They’re born with natural ability. Their gait is one they actually come into this world with.”

For Thad, the road to a World Grand Championship meant afternoons of driving the 20 miles from East Central High School to the Coaling farm to train for competitions leading up to The Celebration.

Then there were weekends and summer months spent cleaning stalls and performing other farm chores.

“This is pretty much what I call my sport to compete in,” said Thad, a junior at East Central. “I’ve been around it all my life.”

Besides the exacting demands of his father, Thad also had the expectations of Lewis, the horse’s trainer, to deal with. Lewis gave up his job at the Tuscaloosa Veterans Affairs Medical Center two years ago to become a full-time trainer for Way.

“He’s not easy on an individual,” Thad said of Lewis, as if speaking both for himself and Silver Design.

But the high expectations and rigid training paid off.

“The rider can really affect how the horse performs,” McGee said. “He did a really good job of riding the horse and that was the consensus of everybody. He rode the hair off the horse,′ one trainer up here said.”

Next month, Thad and Silver Design will present the colors at the International Tennessee Walking Horse Championship in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Plans for future competition are being weighed, though no final decisions have been made.

“I’d be leaning toward him competing in the Celebration again,” Jack Way said. “It’s hard to take a horse that’s loved as much as he is at the time of his life and keep him out of the show ring.”

One thing for certain: The win has rejuvenated Silver Design’s breeding career. Way plans to increase the horse’s stud fee from about $800 to $1,000.

“It doesn’t hurt its reputation any to have him come back like that and win a World Grand Championship title,” McGee said.

Way declined to reveal what he and partner Rex Critzer of Franklin, Mich., paid for Silver Design. But he said they have already exceeded their business plan of recouping the horse’s purchase price through stud fees within two years. Last year, the horse bred 100 mares.

Richard Garnes, who sold Silver Design to Way and Critzer, says he doesn’t have any regrets about the transaction. Garnes’ wife, Linda, rode the horse to the 1993 championship.

“We’ve always loved the horse and felt that whatever is best for the horse needed to happen,” Garnes said. “As it turned out, what Jack did with the horse ... couldn’t have been any better.”