Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Tracy Fenney rides S & L Willie to the win in the $50,000 Grand Prix of Roanoke.

Nine-time winner Aaron Vale rides Sinatra during the $50,000 Grand Prix of Roanoke.

Gas prices as high as the Texas sky may not seem so expensive next year. The highway miles from the Lone Star State to the Star City may seem to be a bit shorter.

Tracy Fenney, finally persuaded along with her husband Mike McCormick to make the long haul from Flower Mound, Texas, to the Roanoke Valley Horse Show at the Salem Civic Center, found her first visit to these faraway parts to be a profitable one.

Fenney and her mount S&L Willie survived a four-horse jumpoff, 25 other first-round contestants and a hair-raising Linda Allen-designed course to capture the $50,000 Grand Prix of Roanoke on Saturday night.

She's already had a nice week, the previous highlight being a runner-up finish aboard MTM Centano in Thursday's $7,500 Open Stake.

"Now I really like it here," she said. "We're putting this on our calendar. It was fabulous. The crowd, we don't get that too often. It's just awesome."

A large gallery came to see one of the largest fields -- 26 horses -- in the 24-year history of this event. For most of the competitors, it wasn't a jolly evening in the saddle. Fences went down all over the course in the opening round.

With them, so did Aaron Vale, rider of three horses and winner of a record nine previous Roanoke Prix. Also disappointed was defending champion Pato Muente, who couldn't pilot either of his two mounts past the opening round. Another great talent, 1984 Olympic gold medalist Joe Fargis, was thwarted in his two-horse bid.

The last of the four riders to appear in the jumpoff, Fenney blazed through in a time of 31.066 seconds to overtake frontrunner Stedet's Leroy, Hillary Simpson in the irons.

Simpson, also appearing in her first Roanoke Prix, had set the initial standard of 34.363 seconds.

"The last two Grand Prix we've ridden in have been on big open fields on grass," Simpson said. "He was really great on those. So coming indoors in a small indoor ring was definitely a challenge. ... We planned to be very methodical. It worked."

Third went to Evan Coluccio and Romeo. The youngest rider in the field at age 20, Coluccio had already ridden Romeo to a win in the Welcome Stake earlier this week. He'd won another big class on another horse, Dare Devil, which won the Speed Stake.

Coluccio had a great round going in the jumpoff before tipping the last fence with a clip of Romeo's hooves.

Fourth was Mary Lisa Leffler and Gerona 92, bidding to become only the third horse ever to win twice here. The two of them won the 2006 title.

"She loves this ring and she loves the crowd," Leffler said. "I just knew I had to be fast, fast."

Gerona 92 had just four faults for one fence down.

Vale ended in fifth with Aristide and sixth with Danacar.

Matthew Shiflet rode Anadon's Ruth to the $5,000 Five Gaited championship. A 5-year-old mare, Anadon's Ruth had been shown in harness before going under saddle a year ago, when she won at the Lexington Junior League in Kentucky and again in Raleigh, N.C.

So far this year, she won again at the show in Asheville, N.C.

"I was just thrilled at the way she worked for me," Shiflet said. "She did everything. This is the first time I asked her to step up and she was right there for me."