By Team TPH
Equestrian viewers of TikTok and Instagram can hardly believe their eyes when “Ka-chow” flies across their algorithm. The small pony made waves when videos surfaced of her competing in the jumpers, clearing obstacles and darting around turns so quickly her legs began to blur, and even videographers can’t keep up with her velocity around courses.
Appropriately named after Pixar’s infamous talking racecar’s catchphrase, Ka-chow, also known as Wini, is owned by the Antoniadis family’s Southside Equestrian.
At the end of 2022, they received a call from Graystone Stables, where Denise Antoniadis’s daughters, Alliyah and Kierstin, grew up riding. Owner Jody Moraski said she had a pony who was beautiful, fancy, and qualified for the Small Green Pony Hunters at USEF Pony Finals, but with one caveat: she goes extremely fast and nothing can slow her down or keep her busy enough.
There was no division anywhere in the U.S. at the time that suited a pure Welsh pony with the heart of a lion, the bravery of a war horse, and the speed of a…well…racecar. “We had this pony who was an Olympic-level show jumper shrunk into a 12.2 hh body,” says Alliyah. “So when the prize list for the 2023 Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) came out and we read ‘Itty-Bitty Jumpers,’ as a division offering, it was the happiest day of Wini’s life.”
The Itty-Bitty Jumpers were established at WEF in 2022 to be an introductory-level jumper division (a course of all vertices set at a height not to exceed 0.65 m), and as an advocate for the class, Alex Jayne, of Our Day Farm, said in a Facebook post by Wellington International, “It gives older horses a new purpose and the youngest or oldest riders a safe starting point.” Not just horses got to enjoy this class, but ponies too; some who may have been too small or too short-strided to compete safely in other low-level jumper classes.
That was the case for Wini, who was more than happy to make the transition from pony hunter to pony jumper that first winter season with Southside. “We try to listen to these ponies and create a program where they will shine. When we get it right and they’re happy, it shows,” says Alliyah. “We never had to ‘train her’ to do what she does; we just had to give her crazy enough ideas to match her drive.”
Something not many of Wini’s fans know is that she doesn’t really get ridden at home. She’ll get in a good practice about once every month, and spends the rest of her time babysitting young horses around the farm–she saves her energy and jumps for what she truly loves–horse showing!
The first time Wini did the Itty-Bitties, Alliyah realized, “She’s extraordinary, and we instantly knew she found her place in this world forever.” Wini proceeded to receive first place and Champion titles in almost every class she did with a few different young riders, including Lacey Powers, who has ridden Wini and shown her for Southside from the beginning of her jumper career, and Heritage Farm’s Cisy Zhou, who has leased Wini for the past two years.
In August of 2023, with no Pony Jumper National Championship for ponies of Wini’s size, the Antoniadis family brought her to Pony Finals to compete in the hunters with a student of theirs who had really wanted to go. “She ended up placing in the middle of the pack in the Small Greens, even with her head sideways, and bouncing around the Rolex Stadium with nowhere but straight to go,” Alliyah says, “But she lost her mind with the braiding, the tail wrap, and worst of all, going slow(ish).”
That following winter, Wini returned to her jumper realm. She competed in the Itty Bitty Jumpers all circuit long at WEF 2024 and earned Circuit Champion of the division with Powers and Zhou on board.
After countless efforts in the form of United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) rule change submissions and Facebook posts that garnered loud support and attention, in 2025, the governing body announced Pony National Championships would hold categories of jumping competition that appropriately reflected small, medium, and large pony size (read more about the announcement here).
Many pony competitors and their riders were ecstatic to hear the news, so competition at WEF stiffened up. Wini fought fiercely to end up Circuit Champion in the new Small Pony Jumpers division and was also Reserve Champion in the Itty Bitty Jumpers. Alliyah says, “It turns out there were about 143 ponies just like our girl who desperately needed their own category to show the world what they’re made of and bring riders into the sport of showjumping safely while having fun.”
She adds, “All those ponies have different stories–they may have been too hard to prep, maybe they don’t have a lead change, or they may not be a breed, color, size or have movement that would place well in the hunters–yet all 143 ponies found a place at the 2025 Pony Jumper Championships at Pony Finals (compared to 12 entries the year prior, before height categories were introduced).”
Wini took the whole summer off after WEF 2025, so she could be in peak performance condition for August in Kentucky, the week before Pony Finals, where she was Champion with Powers. Then it was time for the Pony Jumper Championship with Zhou.
In their final competition together, the pair jumped clear all five rounds, ending with a bold and brilliant jump off to claim the 2025 Small/Medium Pony Jumper Individual Championship. “You look, she turns. You steer, she jumps. You want to win? She will win,” says Alliyah. “There’s no funny business with her. She is quite literally one in a million.”
When fans and audience watch Wini and say, “I wonder if she’s always that good at this,” or “I wonder if she’s ever badly behaved,” Alliyah says the answer is, without fail, no. “She’s always been ‘that girl’ (youthful slang to mean ‘iconic’), and she has never been naughty a day in her life–even when she was told to do the hunters.”
Wini has found a job she absolutely loves, but she has a lot of fun outside of the show ring, too. “She really enjoys anything that involves going fast,” says Alliyah. “She’s won multiple events in barrel racing, and she loves to do cross-country jumps as well!”
The people who follow Wini online (she even has her own TikTok handle @kachowthequeen) or who have had the privilege to work with and be around her all adore the small pony who dared to grow wings and take flight. With new rider Estella Waldman, Wini will continue to compete in the pony jumpers right at home with Southside Equestrian, training with Alliyah Antoniadis.
“If you see Wini at the Hampton Classic this summer or at WEF 2026, don’t blink or you’ll miss her!”
