INCENTIVES:  Royal Crown, Riata Championship, Gold Buckle

A $7 million reining producer also loaded with speed and intelligence? That’s the holy grail for ropers. The late, great Smart Chic Olena®, known as “Chic,” is by $42 million cutting sire Smart Little Lena, and his dam Gay Sugar Chic boasts the speed of Thoroughbred ancestors like Three Bars and Chicaro.

Chic is the only horse to have ever won AQHA world championships in both cutting and reining. It’s no surprise that Chic is enshrined in the AQHA Hall of Fame, the NRHA Hall of Fame and the NRCHA Hall of Fame. The 1985 stallion’s legacy, expertly preserved by Trevor and Tiffiny Bond, exemplifies a commitment to allow Chic’s legacy to continue to transcend time.

“We recently decided to increase our focus on the rope-horse industry,” said Trevor Bond, whose Infinite Reproduction & Genetics (IRG) is a Riata Championship sponsor and helps ropers break into the breeding industry via ICSI fertilization (IRG and Smart Chic Olena are also ARHFA sponsors). “But then when these roping futurities started, we knew he’d be an incredible cross not just on older bloodlines, but on a lot of the newer ones. Chic was old-school, with a lot of bone and size. He was fast, cowy and smart.”

Last February, a 15-hand, 3-year-old son of Chic became the highest-selling horse in the history of the Billings (Montana) Livestock when the palomino colt sold for $147,000. A handful of months before that, Collen All Chics (a son of Smart Chic Olena), helped his heeler, Cody Marx, split $112,060 in the 2023 Riata #9.5. With more than $14.7 million in progeny earnings, Chic’s lineage boasts winners in every discipline.