Blue—the grade, 20-year-old roan gelding who carried Tanner Tomlinson to $199,726 in NFR earnings in 2023 and the NFR aggregate record at 53.0 on 10—died Sunday, Aug. 24, from a gastric tear.
NFR header and RNCFR Champion Coy Rahlmann had loaned the horse to Tomlinson for that Finals. In 2024, Ben Jordan, the Utah header and businessman, bought the horse from Rahlmann to take his career to the next level.
“That horse changed my roping,” Jordan said. “I only owned him for a year, but he was a game changer. He was really special to my kids and my family.”
“Game changer” is the descriptor everyone who swung a leg over Blue used to explain the 15.2-hand, 1,300lb gelding that Rahlmann bought from Jeremy Hemmann in 2021.
“To me, he made my career,” Rahlmann said. “The brown I bought from Driggers, the sorrel I had this winter, I was looking for Blue in those horses. He gave me a feel I’m always going to want in my rodeo-style horses.”
“He set my career off in a big way,” Tomlinson added. “He told me I was more than welcome to take him and ride him. I thought maybe I’d win a go-round, get out of there with a few checks. To have the year I had, and still hold the average record, that horse holds a special part in my heart because he was an amazing horse. He started my career off, and I wouldn’t be here today without that.”
But Blue wasn’t just good in the Thomas & Mack. Colby Lovell won California Rodeo Salinas on him in 2021, and Rahlmann rode him all that year to make the Finals, too.
“That was just a good solid horse,” Lovell said. “He did the same thing every time, everywhere.”
