At the Charlie 1 Horse All-Girl Challenge Team Roping on March 17 in Guthrie’s Lazy E Arena, Hall-of-Fame cowgirl Lari Dee Guy won first with Annette Stahl and second with last year’s champ, Whitney DeSalvo, to take home $28,375 to Abilene, Texas.
The event is part of Wrangler BFI Week presented by Yeti, which kicked off on March 14 with the 44th Bob Feist Invitational (BFI) for the pros. Annually the richest all-female team roping in the country, this year’s Charlie 1 Horse Challenge fielded 229 teams from across the country, up from 184 teams last year.

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.

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.

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.

The Sale at Rancho Rio:

Smartys Dunny, consigned by Trevor Brazile, sells for $250,000

Since its inception, The Horse Sale at Rancho Rio has become the leading rope horse sale in the country and the premier horse sale of the Team Roping Capital of the World. Held each year in Wickenburg, Arizona, in conjunction with the National Team Roping Finals, The Horse Sale at Rancho Rio is limited to 65 top rope horses and draws consignors and buyers from all over the U.S. and Canada.

In the same arena last year as the BFI and just a couple of days after it, Whitney DeSalvo of Wilmar, Arkansas, hammered 11 of 12 steers on the second hop in the Charlie 1 Horse All-Girl in Guthrie, Oklahoma – and if her mare, Becky, hadn’t bucked on the first one, she’d surely have batted a thousand.

On the heels of pandemic-prompted civic uncertainty in Nevada that forced the last-minute cancellation in Las Vegas of the World Series of Team Roping Finale, organizers of Wrangler Bob Feist Invitational (BFI) Week have good news.