Growing up with a disability in an unforgiving culture taught four-time national champion para reiner Frederick Win of Wayne, New Jersey, how to fight for what he wanted in life. Born with one leg substantially shorter than the other, Freddy faced bullying, shame and negativity from almost everyone he knew in his home country of Burma, now Myanmar.

“In my people’s culture, handicapped people were viewed as unnatural, and if you had one in your house, you were considered unlucky,” Freddy says. “So, when people saw me leaving the house or riding horses, they’d ask me, ‘Why are you out? You don’t have a leg. Why don’t you stay home?’ Luckily, no one could break me, not even when I was young.”

Freddy’s birth defect occurred when his mother was treated for malaria while pregnant. The medicine caused Freddy to be born with his right foot attached just below his hip. While his disability may have limited what other people thought he was capable of, it didn’t slow Freddy down. One day, when he was a young boy and already obsessed with horses, Freddy’s worried mother locked him in the house to keep him from going riding. Undeterred, Freddy climbed out of a third-story window and descended 40 feet to the ground so that he could go ride.

That same devil-may-care determination still inspires everything Freddy does today. Now an accomplished immigration lawyer with his own practice in New Jersey, a successful horseman and a dedicated husband and father, Freddy, 42, meets every challenge in life head on.

“I don’t give up easily,” Freddy says. “I always make myself tougher than the difficulty I’m facing. That’s the type of person I am. If I have to work hard for a year to train my horse, I’ll tell myself to do it for three years. I raise the bar so that mentally, I’m even stronger. I never got anything easy, and I don’t want easy.”

Unstoppable

Freddy’s introduction to horses came in the form of neighborhood pony rides. His family lived in the bustling city of Rangoon, now Yangon, where horses were scarce, but every so often, a young man from a nearby village would visit and bring a pony to sell rides to the city children.

“These ponies wore bells around the necks so you could hear the noise when they walked down the street,” Freddy says. “If I heard that noise, I knew the horses were coming. Today, when I see kids chasing ice cream trucks, I remember that’s how I felt when the horses came in. My uncles and my mother were angry because I’d miss school to follow the horses all day.”

Eventually, Freddy took over the horse handler’s job so he could spend more time in the saddle. During those early experiences, Freddy taught himself Burmese trick riding and learned how to vault into the saddle without help.

“I had a fake leg, but I hated it,” Freddy says. “The only time I wore the leg was to school, and the minute I came home, I’d throw it away and jump around with one leg. That’s why I can jump up on a horse any time, even today.”

Freddy knew he’d be in trouble if his family caught him riding – but he didn’t care. He’d been bitten by the horse bug, and all he wanted was to share his love of horses with people. The enterprising young man quickly developed a whole repertoire of tricks with the pony to entice neighbor children and their families to ride.

“When I was a kid, horses were just so far away from the city that people didn’t connect with them. I wanted to make horses accessible to everybody,” Freddy says. “I wanted to show people that even in city life, you can fit horses into your daily life. You can connect with them.”

Spanish Dreams

Freddy’s determination also extended beyond horses. When Freddy realized he would be forbidden to study political science due to the Burmese junta regime, he immigrated to the United States at 23 to major in political science and pursue a career in law. Toward the end of law school, Freddy spent a semester abroad in Spain to study European Union law. While he was there, he found one more thing to love about horses: Spanish dressage.

“I loved watching the Spanish dressage because the way the riders carry themselves and the way the horses move is so exotic,” Freddy says. “Then I saw flamenco dancers performing with the horses.”

That’s when Freddy decided he was going to ride Spanish dressage one day, with a beautiful woman dancing by his side – the same woman, in fact, that he’d met just days before going to Spain: Lilia Shytk, his future wife.

“I was just about to go to Spain for study abroad when I was finishing law school,” Freddy says. “The first time I saw her, I thought she was more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.”

After three dates with Lilia, Freddy left for Spain and hoped he’d still have a chance with her when he returned.

“When I was watching those horses and dancers in Spain, I was thinking about Lilia,” Freddy says. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to show that girl how I can ride horses. She isn’t a rider, but I will show her that horses can be part of our relationship and our love.’ And I imagined her dancing with me.”

Freddy returned home, married Lilia, and together, they settled in New Jersey to build their careers and start a family. But Freddy never forgot about his dream of riding and dancing with Lilia. Someday, he decided, that dream was going to come true.

Make It Rein

After cementing his career in immigration law, Freddy later rekindled his passion for riding by learning reining with National Reining Horse Association million-dollar rider Dean Brown of Campbell Hall, New York. It was Dean who eventually paired Freddy with Friday Night Sailing. Fondly known as “Stella,” the 2012 bay mare by Friday Night Shiner out of Sailazan has carried Freddy to multiple show-pen victories over the years as a phenomenal reining mount. Together, they’ve won four national championships in para reining.

“I’m very proud of Stella, but I’m proud of the two of them as a team, too,” Dean says. “Freddy has put in all the work. I don’t teach him as if he has a disability. Sometimes I think about ways we can do things differently, but in the end, we still have to do the work. Freddy’s the hardest-working non-pro that I’ve probably ever had.”

Although Freddy has ridden for years without an extension or a prosthetic, Dean and Stella’s former owners, Bob and Arlene Santagata, wanted to make Freddy a custom spur as a gift. Designed and hand crafted by Ray Maheu, the spur extension attaches to Freddy’s short leg and enables him to cue Stella with more precision.

“I was shocked when I rode with the spur for the first time, because I got my leg back,” Freddy says. “If you move your toe, you can feel it in your brain. For me, I don’t feel it. But now I have the spur and I move the spur and I can feel it in my brain. I was like, ‘After 40 years, you’ve got to be kidding me!’”

Daydreams Made Real

At the 2019 all American Quarter Horse Congress, Freddy decided it was time to bring his long-cherished Spanish daydreams to life – and he knew Stella was the horse to help him do it.

“Stella is such a good student,” Freddy says. “She is trained to learn. Her mentality is to work hard every day. She doesn’t even know that she has become a great reining horse. She’s always just saying to me, ‘Teach me, I don’t know anything.’ And my goal is to be just like her.”

Thanks to Stella’s adaptability and willingness to learn, Freddy was able to combine Spanish dressage movements with reining maneuvers in an exquisitely choreographed freestyle routine, adding a touch of foreign elegance to his favorite sport. After deciding to go forward with the routine, all he needed was for Lilia to agree to dance with them at Congress.

“I remember when Freddy first saw Spanish riding, and he was very impressed by it,” Lilia says. “And then we went to Spain together a couple of years ago, and I saw flamenco dancers performing with the horses. When I saw it with my own eyes, I knew what he was talking about because it was really beautiful. He wanted to do that with me, and I didn’t know what to say at first, because I don’t really ride horses and I don’t dance.”

Despite feeling completely out of her comfort zone, Lilia agreed, and Freddy’s dream came true at the 2019 Congress. While the music played, Freddy and Stella spun, stopped and circled, Lilia danced, and the crowd cheered. When the night ended, Freddy and Stella had earned top honors in the NRHA Non-Pro Freestyle Reining.

For Freddy, it was the culmination of years of dreaming summed up in one beautiful moment.

“I wanted to do this routine with my wife, because that was the dream I had when I went to Spain so many years ago: to dance with a beautiful woman and a beautiful horse,” Freddy says. “And I waited many, many years to make it happen.”