Utah’s Rhen Richard has a name for Sammis Big Gal: his little secret weapon.

But the mare is anything but little and absolutely not a secret anymore. She sits high call for Richard going into the Old West 6-&-Under Heading short round, topping the Open progressive rounds with a 683.83 over a deep field—one of four head horses Richard has inside the Open top 17. Richard and Sammis Big Gal already picked up $4,000 for the Round 2 win with a 228.24.

“I always called her my little secret weapon, because nobody really liked her when we started her,” Richard said. “We started her late.”

What he saw was a way of moving that fit the way he ropes. It’s resulted in $84,047 in QData earnings—including a Gold Buckle Futurities title—up to the start of the Old West.

“She’s super up and driving on her butt, fast-footed. She’s got that race horse run,” Richard said. “For me, I swing aggressive and she fits that style. She likes to stay ahead of me on my rope. She’s always running up under it. I love it.”

That run traces straight to her papers. Sammis Big Gal is by Cc Brooks Big Boy and out of Sammi James Smith, a Jesse James Jr. mare with hard racehorse breeding underneath — the reason Richard’s family wanted her in the first place.

“We actually bought them because of her bottom side,” Richard said. “She’s a big-time racehorse-bred mare and just produced in multiple disciplines.”

She’s also the front edge of a program. Richard said the mare has full siblings coming, a weanling on the ground and a 3-year-old in the pipeline, and the cross has him thinking hard about what makes a rope horse last.

“I think the magic cross in the future is gonna be a quarter cow, three-quarter runner,” Richard said. “To make a horse last—and want to stay running and do the things they have to do to still be going at 20 years old—they have to be driving, they have to be free-wheeling. When you breed too much cow into them, they get cowy. They want to rate.”

On the day that put her on top, the part Richard worried about turned out to be the easy part.

“The box, she was phenomenal,” Richard said. If anything, he backed off her. “The more you load her up, when you leave it’s full contact. So I didn’t quite have as much hold today—I thought, I’m just gonna start, and I’ve got plenty of horse to get there.”

Richard is doing all of this while running the show. He’s a producer of the event, and said the week’s biggest job—sorting the short-round cattle—is already done.

“They’re gonna be medium-plus. We’ve been sorting all day,” Richard said. “We tried to pick 35 head out of each set that were straight, medium-plus type cattle.” Of the production load, he added: “We have an amazing team. Now I can kind of step back and focus on the job at hand. They’ve done a great job.”

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