Two 4-year-old mares that won their divisions at the American Rope Horse Futurity Association Red Bud Spectacular will run for a $1 million sale bonus when the ARHFA Old West Futurity opens June 14, 2026, in Heber City, Utah.
Woody To My Jessie, who J.D. Yates rode to the Pre-Futurity heading championship, and This Star Is Special, which Trevor Brazile piloted to the Pre-Futurity heeling title, both sold through last year’s Old West Sale—the eligibility requirement for the bonus. Sale graduates that win at this year’s event share the $1 million; a lone sale-horse winner claims the full amount.
The Old West runs June 14-20, 2026.
How they won the Red Bud
Yates rode Woody To My Jessie to the Pre-Futurity heading title on a cumulative composite score of 899.20, capped by a 225.78 short round—a comfortable margin over runner-up Fendiii (894.60). The mare was the steadiest header in the division all weekend, winning the second and third go-rounds for $1,500 apiece before closing in the average. She topped the Intermediate standings for $7,170 and won the open finals for $9,990, combining for a division-best $20,160 at the event. In a twist on the eligibility story, the same mare also ran the other end: Trey Yates heeled Woody To My Jessie to eighth in the Pre-Futurity heeling finals (883.28), so she’ll also be going for the million bonus on the heel side in Utah, too.
This Star Is Special delivered the most decisive win of either 4-year-old division. With Brazile heeling, the mare posted a 905.08 cumulative composite and a 225.94 short round to win the Pre-Futurity heeling finals by better than 10 points over Gun Shyy (894.79), claiming the $12,790 champion’s check.
Yates hands off before the biggest run
The headline twist belongs to Yates, the 66-year-old ProRodeo and AQHA Hall-of-Famer, who will not be aboard Woody To My Jessie when the mare he developed goes for the big money. Yates is scheduled for shoulder surgery Friday, June 5—the third operation on the same shoulder—and will turn the mare over to two-time PRCA World Champ Kaleb Driggers in the heading and his son, NFR aggregate champ Trey Yates, in the heeling at the Old West.
“I don’t know what good I could do them,” Yates said of the change. “Obviously they rope better than me. If I have her ready to go before they leave, if she’s going to work and they do their job, they’ll have a chance.”
Owned by Mike Van Egdom and bred by Redgie Probst, Woody To My Jessie is by $15.9 million sire Woody Be Tuff and out of the Metallic Cat mare Metallic Jessie—a Woody Be Tuff-over-Metallic Cat cross that has become the stallion’s signature mix. Yates said the mare was one he and her connections both liked at the sale, and the Van Egdoms bought her in Heber last year.
Yates said the mare came to him green and lightly started.
“I didn’t take her nowhere,” he said. “There was a friend of theirs that heeled on her in Arizona, and she’d never been headed on. They did a nice job, and she went to the wheat pasture and ran on the stocker cattle up there in Nebraska for quite a while. Then they started roping on her, and they wanted to get her to me, so I took her from there and started heading on her, heeling on her, and changed some things.”
Yates, who has split time heading and heeling the mare and likes what he sees when Trey heels her, said her temperament is the difference.
“She wants to score, and she wants to run,” Yates said.
He has been deliberate with her schedule, entering one futurity—in Arizona, heeling only—and making a start at Guthrie while favoring the shoulder.
“Everybody’s got their own strategy,” Yates said. He insisted the seven-figure carrot is not what is taking the mare to Utah: “Just because it’s a $1 million bonus, that’s not the reason we’re going. She’s good enough to go to a major event and have a chance to win.”
Brazile keeps the reins on a bought-back mare
Brazile’s mare arrives with a reining pedigree and a history in legendary hands.
By Gunners Special Nite—the sire of multiple ARHFA world champions already, including one of Brazile’s— and out of the dun mare Stars And Sparks, This Star Is Special was bred by Wayne Oldenburg and came out of Tom McCutcheon’s reining program before the Relentless Remuda bought her, sold her to owner Jerad Wittwer, and watched Wittwer route her through the sale and buy her back—the move that made her eligible for the bonus. Miles Baker heeled on her ahead of the sale; Brazile has ridden her since.
“She feels like she shouldn’t be able to do the stuff that she does, because her demeanor is real laid back, but she can run, she can gather,” Brazile said. “Usually that doesn’t come with a gentle, kind mare, but she’s been really easy to be around and train.”
Brazile plans to heel on the mare himself at the Old West, with Baker helping on the head side. He said a million-dollar short round demands a different approach.
“It’s not one of those things where you can just be good that day—you have to win first,” he said. “I feel like you approach that show a little bit different. You want to go down swinging.”
His plan is to put the run on display rather than play it safe: “You put them in a situation that only really good horses can handle, and it’s worth extra points.”
What’s on the line
If both mares win their divisions in Heber City, they would share the bonus with any other sale graduate that wins; if either stands alone, the full $1 million is in play. For Yates, the payoff would come from the sidelines, two days into a recovery he said he could not delay.
“Fifteen years, I’ll be done roping, so it don’t matter,” he said of the surgery. “It’s all good.”