Get ready for the 2021 Quarter Horse Congress. We are back, Congress Strong and ready, once again to present the greatest horse show on earth. This highly-anticipated event is the largest single-breed show in the world.

For the second straight year, former world champion bull rider Mike White and his wife, Hannah, of DeKalb, Texas, roped their way to a six-figure win in the #12.5 Oil Field Showdown on Monday at Wrangler BFI Week presented by Yeti in Guthrie, Oklahoma. 

Anchored by the 44th Annual Bob Feist Invitational for professionals on March 14, the five-day event includes eight affiliated amateur ropings and was held because of pandemic restrictions for the second time in Guthrie’s Lazy E Arena.

Fans watched the greatest jackpot team roper in history extend his record of wins and break the all-time earnings record at the world’s richest pro roping Sunday night in Oklahoma.
Kory Koontz, 49, of Stephenville, Texas, clinched victory at the Wrangler Bob Feist Invitational (BFI) presented by Yeti for the record third time, riding a horse he raised and nursed back to health after a horrific auto accident a year ago. Exactly 25 years after Koontz won back-to-back BFI titles with Rube Woolsey and Matt Tyler, he and Manny Egusquiza Jr. roped six steers in 46.48 seconds to earn $150,000 cash and epic prizes.

The Cinch Timed Event Championship is in the books, and Mississippi’s Marcus Theriot rode the roller coaster to the end of the tracks for the biggest win of his young career. With 25 runs—five each in heading, heeling, tie-down roping, steer wrestling and steer roping—done in 322.4 seconds, Theriot won $100,000 and is just the 17th Ironman in the tradition-rich TEC’s 37-year history.

What a difference a day makes. Just ask Clay Smith, who’d been dominant through two rounds and held the overall Cinch Timed Event Championship lead after four of five events in Round 3.

FEI Extends Shutdown of International Events in Mainland Europe Due to EHV-1 Outbreak

The shutdown will mean the cancellation of the FEI World Cup™ Finals for the second consecutive year following the loss of the 2020 Finals in Las Vegas (USA) to the Covid-19 pandemic.The FEI has imposed a further two-week extension of the shutdown of all international events in mainland Europe until 11 April 2021 due to the ongoing outbreak of the neurological form of Equine Herpes Virus (EHV-1). The FEI had previously announced a 28-day shutdown on 1 March 2021.
The move, which aims to minimise the further spread of the very aggressive strain of the virus, was unanimously approved at an emergency FEI Executive Board meeting today. The extended lockdown applies to all FEI disciplines.

With 57.8 seconds on five runs—one each in heading, heeling, tie-down roping, steer wrestling and steer roping—two-time World Champion Team Roper Clay Smith took the Round 1 victory lap around the gargantuan Lazy E Arena on opening night at the 2021 Cinch Timed Event Championship. The guy who won back-to-back gold heading buckles in 2018 and ’19 got off to a great start, and grinned at evening’s end saying that competing in Rodeo’s Ironman is “almost a vacation” compared to getting ready for it.

“Gunners” – or the first team out at the 44th edition of the Bob Feist Invitational (BFI) on March 14 – will be two of the wiliest veterans in the game. Not only has each man already won the BFI, but each has also ridden at least one horse awarded as the best of the event. Hall-of-Famer J.D. Yates, a 21-time NFR roper who won the BFI in 2010 with Jay Wadhams, will turn the first steer for eight-time NFR heeler Cody Cowden, who won “the Feist” in 1997 with Bobby Hurley.

RFD-TV’s The American Rodeo Presented by Durango Boots has crowned its 2021 champions, and each of these winners, for the first time in the American Rodeo history, are all from the top 10 world invitees, each taking home $100,000 in prize money.  Because no qualifier won their event, there was no million dollar bonus this year, and now the million will carry over to next year to potentially turn someone into the next multi-million dollar cowboy.