Joseph Harrison has proven the king of the rope horse business in 2024, entering the American Rope Horse Futurity Association World Championships having won $199,000 at the Old West Futurity in Utah and helping other ropers to another $225,000.
Harrison has won $706,042 in ARHFA competition, and he’s ridden horses that have sold for hundreds of thousands to the industry’s hottest talents, Brazilian investors and everyday ropers. He’s set the standard for how people can make money in the new era of the rope horse business, and he’s shown a profitable path to success training horses and making a living with a rope—a path that didn’t really exist a decade ago.
Harrison’s template for success isn’t the norm, though. But perhaps it’s the guiding light that horse trainers, and those who want to be trainers someday, model their programs after.
At the same time, horse trainers who never had gold buckle dreams—like those who cashed big checks on homemade horses at the Riata—are realizing bigger payouts than ever before. They’re the guy or girl down the road who makes good horses easily accessible for the masses, selling affordable, safe, World Series-ready horses, too. Jim Bob Fritz, a 5.5 switchender from Nocona, Texas, has banked $250,514 in handicap ropings since 2021 on his Riata horse, Cat Man San, by Cat Man Do—providing yet another, more attainable model for ropers to aspire to.
So—is now the time to quit your day job and jump into training horses with all the opportunities the futurities and stallion incentives present?
Growing Need for Trainers
Plenty of top talents made early moves into the futurity business. Trevor Brazile retired from ProRodeo just as the futurity industry took off, so he was poised to jump into it with the same work ethic he applied to winning 26 gold buckles.
Harrison, for his part, had spent years honing his craft under Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Lewis in the AQHA show pen. He was sharpening up his roping to throw fast, making his first NFR the same year (2017) that Jay Wadhams hosted the first ARHFA World Championship in Fort Worth. Harrison accomplished what few others have, balancing ProRodeo with winning at the futurities, and he made six NFRs before stepping away from the rodeo trail in favor of full-time horse training after the 2022 Finals.
But Brazile doesn’t ride for outside customers, and Harrison’s string isn’t always the easiest to get a spot in, with his barn full of longtime partners and a lengthy waiting list. With dozens of futurities now filling the schedule and millions in payouts, the demand for quality trainers is growing.
“Seeing guys like JohnRyon Foster, who used to have three or four [horses in training] now having 10 or 12 in his barn, they’re all honing their craft,” Harrison said. “He could have 20 horses in training. Him, Luke Atchison, they’re all doing better and better and learning how to win. And the more they win, the better they get. They’ve been training and learning how to train their whole lives. I’m not saying the rodeo guys haven’t, but they’re the kind of good talent who can make money at this game.”
Foster, who recently won the ARHFA’s Cowtown Classic Intermediate Heeling title on Wood You Know, didn’t grow up in the roping or rodeo world, but his dad, Rob, trained Western pleasure horses in the AQHA, so he had spent two decades working on his horsemanship before moving into the rope horse world.
“A lot of people I knew growing up through the AQHA gave me an opportunity,” Foster said. “At first I was just riding 2-year-olds for my dad. Then I’d get some more people wanting me to ride rope horses and I’d take a few less 2-year-olds. Then I had a lot of people who wanted a nice jackpot horse. People don’t realize I ride horses I don’t show, whether it’s for people who just enjoy having a horse in training or want one ready for roping in lower-numbered ropings. And now, I have a couple horses for Travis Graves, Coleby Payne and JC Flake. They can’t ride their young horses while they’re gone rodeoing over the summer.”
Horsemanship First
It’s guys like Foster who’ve made it their mission to study the finer points of horsemanship—and then stepped up their roping game to match—that the Relentless Remuda’s Miles Baker says are the future of the industry. He was one of those guys himself, who spent most of his life learning the horse training art before the roping part of the game. When he and Brazile began their partnership in 2021, Baker carried a 5.5 heel card—the same number he’d been since 2014. Three years later, Baker is a full partner in the Remuda, now with an 8 heel card to complement his 7 head card.
“Good roping makes good horses, so you need to expose a horse to good roping,” Baker explained. “I can make them better now because I’ve worked hard enough on my roping. The sport is growing enough, like any other industry, that it’s getting to where guys can make a good living doing it. There’s guys who can train horses well who can get to roping better to be competitive, and there’s guys who rope good who need to work on their horsemanship more.
“I told Junior (Nogueira) the other day, I wish I had worked on the roping more when I was younger. I had to work on it so hard in my late 20s, I was behind. But he said I am making more money to make a good living than guys who can just catch two feet, so I did something right. You can improve your roping a lot faster than you can learn how to feel a horse.”
Riata founder Denny Gentry sees the need for deeper understanding of horsemanship expanding into every corner of the rope horse industry.
“Clay (Cooper) just said it in this magazine: ‘Horsemanship is equally if not more important than the roping,’” Gentry said. “That is going to be the case with the numbered ropers as more emphasis is placed on the horses. This movement will no doubt have an impact on the sport at some point.”
Opportunity
While there are more and more competitors opting to become rope horse trainers, fewer and fewer are wanting to train 2-year-olds, creating a bottleneck at the colt-starting stage of the training game.
Baker used to start all the Relentless Remuda colts, but with rising numbers of show horses in the barn and increased money to be won, he found himself starting his days riding year-round at 4 a.m. and still not having time for the 2-year-olds.
“There’s a big calling for guys who are good 2-year-old guys for rope horses, specifically,” Baker said. “We were letting reiners ride our 2-year-old rope horses, and I had to check myself because I had a reiner telling me which ones were good and which ones weren’t. I went to ride through them after 90 days, and the main one they wanted to cull was the best one, for me. I’m listening to a guy who doesn’t rope tell me which ones were good head horse prospects. There’s a disconnect there.
“If somebody could call me and Trevor and say, ‘This 2-year-old feels like a head horse,’ and be right about it, we’d send that somebody all the 2-year-olds we could ride. To this day, we’ve only found a guy or two who understand what we’re looking for and can put that feel on them.”
ProRodeo Hall of Famer and AQHA Hall of Famer J.D. Yates once rode all his own 2-year-olds, but at 64, he’s not really craving that part of it anymore.
“Nobody wants to do it anymore,” Yates said. “Everybody wants to send their horse somewhere to get started. A lot of us who did it are getting old, and it hurts. There are just not a lot of guys who enjoy doing it. They all want to show, and I don’t blame them.”
The 2020 PRCA World Champ Colby Lovell, who’s sold as many high-dollar futurity horses as anyone else in the business, still rides his own 2-year-olds whenever he can.
“I ride the ones I think have the longevity, the ability to be a stud,” Lovell said. “I like to put my own passage of time in them and depend on myself. Most of the 2-year-old guys are cow horse guys, and they have more passion in that industry. We want head horse prospects big, strong, with a lot of run. Those aren’t usually cow horses, and they’re a lot of horse to start and a lot of horse to want to ride. There are 2-year-old guys, but the kind that make good rope horses can be a lot to handle.”
Darren Johnson, who owns CR Better Be Tuff, one of the horses Harrison has won big bucks on in 2024, also starts his own 2-year-olds before putting them in the hands of guys like Harrison, Cade Rice and Dakota Kirchenschlager. Johnson owned X My Ich, the horse Kirchenschlager won the ARHFA World Championship on in the heading in 2020.
“I start my own 2-year-olds,” Johnson said. “That’s what I like to do, obviously. It started with Dakota, and I had two nice colts I started, and I used them, roped on them outside, then I sent them to Dakota in July their 4-year-old years. And then it evolved into this rope horse deal. I rope, obviously, and I just think that horsepower is everything now.
“A lot of people can rope nowadays, so the difference is in the horsepower. I ride them, use them, hand them off to Joseph, Dakota, Cade, and when I get them back, I have a great, quality-trained horse I can take to the roping, and the last thing I worry about is the horse.”
WATCH ON ROPING.COM: Colt-Starting Series with Miles Baker
Show Me the Money
The best trainers in the world are bringing in $1,500-$2,000 a month per horse, and that money might seem like it adds up fast. For some, it does.
“I’ll be real honest with you, it makes money, even for the customers, if the horses are good enough,” Harrison said. “There are three or four horses in my barn that we’ve been showing this year that their owners are making money doing it. They might not be making a living, but they’re in the clear on those horses.”
But even for the owners of the best horses in the show-horse business, that doesn’t always make sense when you put pencil to paper. Shane Boston owns The Notorious BIG, the 2018 stallion by CD Lights out of roping’s blue hen mare, DT Sugar Chex Whiz, whose earnings have topped $100,000 in three years of competition with Billie Jack Saebens.
“Why it doesn’t work, is that you take your average hard-working American who loves team roping,” Boston explained. “He goes and buys himself a $30,000 reject cow horse or cutter or reiner. He sends him to any of the top trainers, and that horse will stay there for a year before he’s ready to compete at a top level, averaging $1,500 a month. So, you have another $17,000 to $18,000 in that horse. Now you’re at $50,000. Then he’s 4 and you start showing him. Well, you’re going to show, possibly winning $15,000 to $20,000, and that’s rare to win that big of a paycheck on one of them. So from a standpoint of putting pencil to paper, you pay your trainer, then your helper, then out of a $20,000 day, you’re going to get maybe less than half of it. You’ve won $10,000. The math isn’t there.”
The Old West Futurity in Wallsburg, Utah, had a payout that topped $1 million, with two $100,000 paychecks going to first place on each end in the 6-&-Under and two $50,000 checks going to the champs in the 4-&-Under. Produced by A&C Racing and Roping’s Richard family and Redgie Probst, it was the highest-paying judged event in the sport’s history.
“The payouts have to be big to make people want to play,” Boston said. “That’s why we’re putting up added money when we can. Now, if you have a program, and you’re trying to promote a mare or a stud or sell colts, it’s getting to be where it’s worth the investment. But at the end of the day, we’re probably still five years away from being where we need to be to get more players in the game.”
Recreational ropers, however, are used to playing for big payouts every weekend at the jackpots, and Riata has opened a door for tracking those earnings, too—showing the lifetime profitability of a rope horse. That profitability is unlike what horses can win in any other discipline, over a much longer career, with many horses competing well into their 20s. Now, with QData and EquiStat working with Riata and the Equine Network to track those horses’ earnings, rope horses are finally just beginning to show their multi-million-dollar annual impact on the official records.
Sleeping Giant
While the judged end might be still playing catch up and following the template of NCHA, NRCHA and NRHA, the time-only side of things at the Riata are trying to awaken the masses to a new angle in jackpot team roping. With the use of big added money from stallion owners, they have become the third richest jackpot in the world in their first 24 months. It’s catching the attention of everyday ropers on the do-it-yourself end of the horse training spectrum.
“The futurities, the Open guys, they get the press because they’re the best and they win a lot,” Pitzer Ranch’s Jim Brinkman said. “But the 4s, the 5s, the 6s, the younger end of those guys, they pretty much make their own horses and they rope on their horses. At our sale, that’s where the majority of ours go. We have 5% that wind up with Open guys.”
That’s saying a lot, since Pitzer has two large sales each year and will sell nearly 400 at their coming fall sale.
“The biggest growth is all in the middle,” Brinkman continued. “And consequently, the futurities will eventually be maxed out, entry-wise, on the upper divisions, because you’ll simply run out of guys. The 6s down to the 4s, that’s where the cowboy kids and the ranchers are. If they get a nice horse, they have somewhere to use them for great money at the Riata. That’s our biggest growth area. The majority of the work on those horses at the Riata was done by the owner/operator. If we can keep that middle big, there’s growth. As a breeder, raising horses, I have to shoot 90% of my horses toward that middle to make it economically right for me. I get a few that could go to Trevor, but the guy who’s a 5 is who will pay the bills for us every year.”
The strategy for Riata from day one has been targeting that market. The Riata Mini-Qualifiers were introduced this year to offer cash-incentive sidepots at major jackpots for more opportunities with the horses. Riata scheduled a half dozen of these sidepots in 2024 and has a dozen on the schedule for 2025. Even more telling is the wide-open experimental #8.5 at the Riata Championships that only requires one Riata per team. They call it experimental, but it’s pretty clear they plan to remove nearly all their filters and go hard at the 4s in the #8.5. If it is successful, the #9.5 will be next in line for that same treatment in 2025. With no ceiling to be cracked, Riata is trying to open the door into a sea of low-number ropers.
Jesse Jolly, a Colorado rancher who won the Riata’s #12.5 on the heel side in 2023, said most of the guys he knows who are gearing up for the Riata are do-it-yourselfers like him, putting in the time on their own colts to get them ready for the jackpots.
“A lot of the guys I know around here have had bad experiences with trainers,” Jolly said. “They send one off for six months, and the horse barely gets rode. Most of them are trying to do it themselves. A lot of trainers are $1,300 to $1,500 a month, and that adds up in a hurry.”
That DIY training approach can take time, something that the average low- to mid-numbered roper working a day job doesn’t have a surplus of. But the word from the Riata nomination office has the number of horses from individuals with a single nomination passing the number of horses from ranch and breeding operations. That was the original plan: to get thousands of ropers to breed to great stallions and build the program from the ground up. It’s possible their proxy program to sell Riata breedings and colts may be providing a false sense of reality in their numbers. But false or not, the colts bought to allow a proxy are going to be hitting the roping arena or horse sales in the next couple of years.
“This year we have heard repeatedly, there are guys getting horses ready for two to three years from now,” Gentry said. “These are your average ropers making their own horses. We set the futurity incentives up to encourage the training of young horses. And we set the age of those futurities where, as a horse gets older, we create a horse market down the number divisions. It’s still too early to be making conclusions, but it appears that most of the mid-level ropers can’t compete on futurity horses, or can’t afford them. They will make their own.”
Full Circle
As the saying goes, all ships rise on a high tide. While the highest end of the futurity rope horses sell for hundreds of thousands—whether they go as breeding stock, rodeo mounts or big-time jackpot horses—the middle-of-the-road horses in the judged futurity industry more often than not make stellar horses in the jackpot world. That provides another revenue source for trainers and owners, and that separates roping from other disciplines, where average horses end up culled or out to pasture. Team roping, with its hundreds of thousands of competitors and tens of millions of dollars in annual payout and World Series barrier, once again provides a massive growth opportunity in the Western performance market.
—TRJ—
