I’ve only ever had the privilege of riding and training (I’ve got to train and ride some really nice horses, don’t get me wrong, but there are nice, and then there are exceptional horses) two exceptional horses in my life- Black who proved himself worthy and Shuttle who has yet to do so, but I have no doubt, if she stays sound and healthy she will. I have rode at least one other exceptional horse and while I love my Gump, (and Big, and Axl and Bird and Woodrow, and Dino and Oopsy, and oh well, you get the idea), it’s still up in the air as to whether he’ll be an exceptional barrel horse; don’t get me wrong, I’m in horse paradise here, and no doubt there are several *should be exceptional horses* standing around waiting for me to throw a leg over them. Gump is already an exceptional horse, and is by far my favorite gelding of all time but he’s only been on the barrels (as a 13yo horse) for under 4 months, so we still have work to do.
But all my horses and their wonderfulness pale in comparision to Lindsey Sears‘ horse, the great Martha (Sugar Moon Express). I was reading my weekly Barrel Racing Report this morning over coffee, and as most of you know the National Finals Rodeo, NFR just concluded on Saturday about how much money this girl won. Rather than recap it, I’ll just share with you the detail, verbatim:
through the 2008 rodeo season starting with a big win at Houston
and never letting up on the competition. She set the regular season
earnings record at $184,567.43, then broke Janet Stover and Hot
Shot’s (Nate Shilabar) WNFR earnings record by earning another
$139,002.41. Together they equalled a total of $323,569.84. If you
add this with the $127,000 (Canadian Dollars) Lindsay won at the
Calgary Stampede that means her and Martha earned right around
$450,000 US and Canadian combined! With Lindsay and Martha
only competing at 29 rodeos and the fi nals the earnings per run are
just amazing. That puts her regular season earnings at $6,364.39 per
regular season rodeo. To put her amazing WNFR run in perspective,
in the 143.25 seconds Lindsay and Martha competed, they won
$970.35 per second during the fi nals and $13,900 per run for 10
runs.
Congratulations, Lindsay and Martha!
It’s like that horse got stronger and stronger every single run!
And that is hard to do in that arena set up . . . it’s usually the opposite.
Awesome post! It was VERY FUN to watch. I am with Ve it was amazing that horse got better and better. Most horses start getting short and sour in that pen by round 5. Yup Martha and Lindsey are my heros!
awesome!
i’m very jealous that horse riding is such a big part of your life.
I’ve never done it, and here in the big ol’ NY there isnt many places to try it..
Holy Crap! They must have worked extremley hard and I’m sure deserve every cent of that money!