In celebrating this spring’s 50th BFI anniversary, we’re showcasing the horseflesh deemed “best of the best” at the event that was literally developed to showcase the world’s best rope horses.
Let’s take it back to 2012, when Riley Minor was riding weak. He was just coming off nine weeks rehabbing his broken leg. It takes a special horse to help a guy win in that situation – especially to let a team come back and almost win the roping despite a broken barrier on the third steer.
As reserve champs to Clay Tryan and Travis Graves that year, the Minors earned $42,000 apiece and a boatload of prizes. To that, Riley added what was then his second Head Horse of the BFI accolade. He’d also won 2008 Head Horse of the BFI on his buckskin gelding, Cadillac, that came from Wyoming’s Bill Spratt.
Nine-year-old Ketchup got his nickname because he was red and, after all, doesn’t everybody like ketchup? That was the perspective of veteran rodeo hand and horse broker Tanner Bryson of Arizona, who’d taken another horse and some money from Minor in trade for the sorrel gelding that February.
“He’s good,” said Minor, who hadn’t even ridden Ketchup before trading. “He scores and runs and never tries to take my rope away.”
Minor and Ketchup were on quite a roll – they’d also banked $12,000 right out of the gates that winter at the Mike Cervi Jr. Memorial Roping (the day before Minor broke his leg).
And at the 2012 BFI, fourth went to a team out of the Southeast, Manny Egusquiza and Brad Culpepper. The latter went ahead and added his own Heel Horse of the BFI award to his $16,500 cash plus prizes. His iconic 13-year-old yellow-and-white Paint named Preacher had come from humble beginnings.
“My dad bought him out of a pasture from a guy who was a preacher,” Culpepper said back in 2012. “He paid $800 for him. Basically, he bought him for a kid’s horse, and he just got better and better. We broke him and trained him and he’s been a pleasure from day one.”
Preacher was a mainstay in Culpepper’s seven-NFR career. The horse first turned heads in 2006 at his first big outing, when Culpepper combined with Speed Williams to win the George Strait (the pair had won the Southeastern Circuit together back in 1994).