Paint stallion wins cutting Super Stakes

Turner, riding JR Red Diablo for owner/breeder George Jensen of Jacksboro, Texas, was the second rider into the second bunch of cattle. And although Phil Rapp, Ronnie Rice and Matt Gaines all did their best to find more points, the Paint stallion's score of 225 points under the five-judge system was the best of the night. First place in the class of 21 4-year-old horses paid $80,702.

Rice, the Buffalo, Texas, trainer who rode the 2001 NCHA Futurity champion horse, was on another Flying M Ranch horse, Smart Sugar Badger. Smart Sugar Badger, incidentally, is also a stallion sired by Smart Little Lena. Dulces Smart Lena and Smart Sugar Badger were named co-reserve champions of the 2002 Flowmaster/NCHA Super Stakes Open. In sum, the 21 horses that made it to the Super Stakes Open finals took home $704,285.

The 2002 Flowmaster/NCHA Super Stakes & Super Stakes Classic cutting concludes Sunday, April 21, and paid out an estimated $2.2 million over the course of the show. Entries for the 2002 edition of the annual spring Fort Worth show jumped an incredible 7 percent from last year's number, from 1,235 entries in 2001 to 1,328 entries in 2002. The $2.2 million purse is a record payout for the Super Stakes & Super Stakes Classic show, which dates back to 1981.

Roy Carter rode Smart Lil Scoot to the Classic/Challenge open championship.

The Super Stakes is a show for only the offspring of nominated stallions. However, with 137 of the industry's top sires on the list of nominees, the show is far from "exclusive." The Super Stakes is for 4-year-old cutting horses and the Super Stakes Classic portion of the show is for horses aged 5 and 6 years old.

And in wining the Classic portion of the show, Smart Lil Scoot did more than just "scoot" to win the 2002 Flowmaster/National Cutting Horse Association Super Stakes Open finals on April 21. The Smart Little Lena stallion has been ridden by Roy Carter since its debut at the 1999 NCHA World Championship Futurity, where the pair finished fifth in the Open.

Since that time, Smart Lil Scoot and the Hempstead, Texas, cutting horse trainer have garnered $155,325. They added an additional $48,257 to that by winning the Super Stakes Classic Open over 33 other horses. Smart Lil Scoot is owned by S & S Farms in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Reserve in the Classic Open was Whittle Mike Odual, a Dual Pep stallion owned by Paula Gaughn of Las Vegas, Nevada. Greg Welch, the NCHA President-Elect, finished the third round of Classic Open competition with a 221-point work. The 34 horses that worked in the class finals cut for a total of $318,921.

See a Photo Gallery of this years Super Stakes competition! Click here!