NRCHA President’s Letter

SOOOOO GOOD

This 2022 Kalpowar Quarter Horses Celebration of Champions was inspiring and challenging. What a great show on so many levels, from the weather to the Corey Cushing, NRCHA president high number of entries to the phenomenal runs we saw across all divisions. First, congratulations to all the champions in the Tres Osos Cow Horse Derby, the World and National Champions, and the World’s Greatest and Youth finalists. Personally, this show was a much needed boost for our family.

I had a friend call me when I was driving from Fort Worth, Texas, back to Arizona and they joked that they thought I’d be on my own private jet. But I said, and I feel, that I got to this point in my career driving myself and putting in the miles for 20-plus years, so why change it up now? It’s rewarding me for all that work. Everybody sees that work come true, but it takes a different amount of time for people. Everybody has their time. The one thing you can count on in this industry is that you always have ups and downs, but people really only see the ups.

Any successful horse trainer will get on a roll. Things will build until the highlight of his life. I’m lucky enough now to have won three World’s Greatest Horseman titles. The first time I won it I thought I was on top of the world, but here comes the guys that went home and worked harder than me and the great horses coming up. As the saying goes, you can go from hero to zero depending on the show. You get back to digging, get back to your roots, go outside the box and start climbing the ladder again.

Leading up to this show, I was spending more time taking care of horses than being on their back, and I was getting frustrated. If you know me, you know I’m big on positivity. About 7 o’clock one night I was cleaning stalls and thinking about the motivational things I’d heard, and “sooooo good” came to me.

My wife, Kristen, called shortly after to see how my day was going and I just said, “Sooooo good.” She started laughing, but I told her we had to turn the energy back around. We are so fortunate, and we have to stay on the positive side of things.

It was sooooo good to see the many different faces that appeared in the Western Bloodstock and Hashtags World’s Greatest Horseman Finals. We saw new names at the top of the levels in the Tres Osos Cow Horse Derby and in a lot of World Champion classes. It is always nice to see new faces and new names coming into the Finals. There are great horses and opportunities for everyone, and we as trainers are having to get better and better.

It was sooooo good for us trainers that have ridden a lot of younger horses to see them have success with someone new. We, as trainers, have put so much quality time into a lot of these bridle horses. Look at the horses in the World’s Greatest Youth Horseman: Zane Davis trained A Time For Jazz, Chris Dawson trained CallMe Mister Mister and Jay McLaughlin trained CD Dee Vee Dee, and the list goes on. The success we feel as trainers isn’t always when we win but sometimes when that horse goes on to be super successful.

The thing that is sooooo good about our industry is that we are all entering in hopes to win, but the camaraderie is what pushes us to be great. It is hard out there in the show pen, and we know it. We are never against each other. It may be that you get beat, but it is cool to see and feel your peers rooting for you. That is what is sooooo good about our association.

Corey Cushing