Incentives: Royal Crown Roping, Riata Buckle

Utah’s Richard family has developed a special eye for the best horses in the business to cross on their standout line of mares, and they began offering their stud Reys Smokin Dually to the public in 2023.

The Richards bought him in Fort Worth at the National Cutting Horse Association’s sale as a yearling, standing out from the pack as the right kind of young stud to cross on the family’s race-bred mares.

“He was bigger than most of them, and he just looked like a rope horse in that sale ring,” Rhen Richard said. “He was really, really calm even then, and he had that eye appeal, too. And when we started him, he never got hot. You could put anybody on him, even early on.”

Before rope horse futurities really came of age in the U.S., Richard took the stud to Canada and won at the futurities there. “He did really well,” Richard said. “But by the time the futurities became a big deal down here, he had aged out.”

So Reys Smokin Dually went to the A&C Racing and Roping breeding barn, crossing on the family’s running-bred mares, adding more trainability, bone and rate to the guaranteed run the family already counted on.

“He’s not a fast-minded horse,” Richard explained. “We can breed him to a hot-bred mare and we can push the colts along as 4-year-olds without worrying about it. We can really get into them and ask them for 100%. That’s good for me and the way I like to rope, not having to slow one down. His colts just have natural rate.”

Never was that more evident than in Fort Worth in October, when Richard claimed the ARHFA’s 4-year-old Heading World Championship on Reys Smokin Dually’s own 4-year-old, Reys Sunset.

“He feels like a real deal horse,” Richard said of the up-and-comer. “He’s a freak athlete. He really runs. Going after that short-round steer was by far the most I’ve ever asked out of him. He felt nervous, so I thought he was going to leave on that last one but, when the gates banged, he just stood there, so I had to make up ground.”

But that horse isn’t even the stud’s most successful offspring to date. Rubys Rollin, the brown 6-year-old mare Richard won California Rodeo Salinas on in 2022—came straight off the futurity trail to win in one of the toughest setups in rodeo’s summer run, and she’s already banked over $50,000 in earnings.