Western Sports

This event involves a horse, cowboy, and their guns negotiating a course filled with targets. The cowboys use two 0.45 caliber single action revolvers firing blanks at balloons mounted on posts in various patterns. Each revolver is loaded with five blanks. The rounds are timed and there are ten balloons. There is a five second penalty for each missed balloon and a ten second penalty for not running the course correctly. 

Watch Cowboy Mounted Shooting Here

Cutting is a true test of a ranch horse’s athleticism and ability to handle cattle. The horse and rider work together in a two-and-a-half-minute run to make two “cuts” from a herd. One cut comes from deep inside the herd. The other from the edges. Once the cow is cut out, it is the horse’s sole responsibility to keep the cow from returning to the herd. The team’s style and savviness in maintaining the cut are judged on a scale of 60 to 80, with 70 being an average score.  

A Mounted Drill Team is a group of horses and riders that perform choreographed maneuvers to music in uniform – not dissimilar to a marching band. While teams perform for audiences as entertainment, there are also drill team competitions.  When in competition, a team is judged on spacing and alignment, timing and coordination, originality, difficulty, attractiveness of patterns, speed, horsemanship, uniformity, manners of the animals, music, and crowd appeal.  

In a Ranch Sorting event, a team of two riders on horseback race against the clock to cut out the correctly numbered cattle and sort them into the correct pen, while keeping the other cattle back. There are ten calves at the end of one of the two pens. The teams must move the cattle from one pen to the other in numerical order, starting with a random number that is called by the judge. The fastest time wins. If a calf gets from one pen to the other out of order, the team is disqualified.  

Roping events are one of the western disciplines that the public is most familiar with. Roping demonstrates one of the most exciting aspects of the working cowboy. Simulating the need to capture cattle, competitors are tasked to lasso the cow over the head, on the horns, and/or around the hind legs before securing the animal as the event dictates. The fastest time wins. There are three different roping events:

• Calf Roping
• Breakaway Roping
• Team Roping

Watch Roping Here

During a Trail Horse Show, horses and riders equipped in western attire and tack are judged on how they negotiate a course of obstacles that represent challenges they would encounter on a nature trail. The courses are designed to focus heavily on the horse’s agility and manners. The judges decide how well the horse performed three specific gaits while navigating the challenges.   

Western Horsemanship competitions are designed to evaluate the horse and rider’s ability to execute a set of prescribed riding maneuvers and gaits with precision and smoothness. Along with judgement of the horse’s ability, the rider is critiqued on their poise, balance, and a functionally correct body position throughout. Rounds are scored from 0-100, with a score in the 70s representing a good performance.  

A Western Riding Horse Show is an event that incorporates elements of multiple western sports. The horse and rider complete a course that incorporates elements of both reining and trail classes. The horses are judged on the quality of their gaits, lead changes, responsiveness to the rider, manners, and disposition. The smoother the better.