Douglas Rich jump rode the 5-year-old Hickory Holly Time gelding Time Toget Wreckless to win the Riata Buckle Open behind Jake Smith on his 5-year-old Judge Boon-gelding Boondocs Blue Boon.

Time Toget Wreckless is by Hickory Holly Time, the same stallion who sired the first Riata champion heel horse DT Hickorys Mistycat, ridden by Dakota Kirchenschlager, to the same title in 2022. DT Horses’ Hickory Holly Time was the leading sire of Riata Buckle horses in 2022, with offspring earning $222,700 across the roping.

In the short round at third callback, Smith and Rich made a 5-second run, the fastest of the entire roping, to win the roping with a 34.80 on five head worth $33,600, plus stallion and breeder payout.

“I got just an average start, but I could tell I was gaining fast,” Smith said. “I wanted to press, but I wanted to make sure I opened everything and covered both horns. I wanted to pull him into his loop.”

The steer was slower and straight, and it let them put the pressure on first and second call, who faltered.

“We waited until the last day to enter,” Smith explained. “I get it all done, I enter Doug, I enter everybody. I send it in, but tell him we should try to find a horse we know or he can ride, and I told him five different people to call. He don’t call nobody, and finally I see Andy (Holcomb) at the ESA deal in Hamilton a couple weeks ago, and I said, ‘Doug, call Andy. I guarantee he has a good one to ride.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty good idea.’ He calls him, and he’s got this yella that looks so easy, a good horse to ride, and I try to get him to go ride him, and he puts that off til the last minute and doesn’t even get to ride him. So he got some videos of him, and we knew it would work good. The horse looked dang good.”

The horse out of Wreckless Chic by Smart Chic Olena and owned by Melissa Fischer had $15,009 in QData earnings before the Riata (including wins in the reined cow horse), so Rich’s win more than doubled Time Toget Wreckless’s LTEs.

“Andy brought him, and I just went and got him out of the stall,” Rich laughed. “I saddled him, loped him around. Andy did all the work.”

While Rich didn’t do anything in his heel horse’s training process, he does claim some credit for the head horse Smith rode.

“Coy [Rahlmann] got him from somebody, and I got him from Coy,” Rich said. “I had him for not super long, two or three months, and I traded him to Jake for a heel horse.”

Smith and Rich, who rodeoed together in 2023 and are best friends outside of the arena, have differing stories about how the horse Smith calls “Screw” ended up the Riata champ.

“Coy started the horse, and then it went to Doug,” Smith said. “But if you can’t screw your buddies, who can you screw on a horse deal. So we done some horse trading, and of course I got the raw end of the deal. The horse is very skittish. (Doug says feely.) I changed his name to Screw because that’s what happened to me on the deal. But it’s taken time, and you can tell whenever I got him that he’s got a good feel but he’s very wild-minded at times. He’s hard to pet, hard to shoe—he’s barefoot right now—and bell boots took a while, but I got to where I liked him enough so I put those on.”

In 2022, Smith and Rich won second in the Riata Buckle’s Open Futurity, so the setup has proven friendly for the team.

The Riata Buckle runs Nov. 2 to 5, 2023, and is streaming exclusively on Roping.com. The #14.5 with $325,000 guaranteed kicks off Friday morning at 8 a.m. CST, followed by the $650,000-guaranteed #12.5.