ARENA RECORD Centerfold Captures Cheyenne Title with Jockey Sue Smith By Kristen M. White W inning a buckle at Cheyenne Frontier Days is a big check mark off any competitor’s bucket list. And to do it with an arena record? Well, that’s just a layer of unexpected icing on the cake.
This is the reality that Sue Smith is currently living. It’s certainly something most could only dream about. She walked away as the big winner of Cheyenne this year, set an arena record on a horse who looks to be a standout star, and propelled herself into the Top 10 of the standings as the season end draws near. Quite a ride. “This is the first year I’ve been able to go this far in a long time,” Smith said. She last qualified for the National Finals Rodeo in 2011, and her original goals for this year included finishing in the top 30. “As of late … we won Nampa, sent an arena record in Ogden, then set the record in Cheyenne - I was already up there in the standings, kind of back and forth in the top 20 and then that all just catapulted me up. A friend of mine said, ‘You might just accidentally make the Finals.’” Accident or not, Smith is looking good, and she’s enjoying the ride this season has taken her on. The Blackfoot, Idaho, cowgirl originally wanted to make her circuit finals and do well there and hoped for a top 30 finish so she could get into some building rodeos next year, thinking her horse will do well there. With those things now accomplished (and then some!) Smith said she’ll continue to rodeo and “see where I end up September 30.”
Smith’s performance in Cheyenne’s tournament-style rodeo is certainly one for the highlight reel. After a series of solid rounds, Sue Smith is known as a top trainer in the barrel racing industry. In 2022, she had trained the horse that Andrea Busby won the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo on and a year later Smith jockeys her own trained horse Dashs Centerfold to the title. With the summer this duo has had Smith is making plans for her third trip to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Photo by Click Thompson
including identical 17.37-second runs (one of them in the semi- finals), she and her horse, Dashs Centerfold, found themselves in the finals with a chance to take it all. Centerfold won the WPRA World Title in the futurity division in 2016, so it’s clear that the horse is a talented one. In hindsight, Smith said it feels like they were destined for each other, because a friend of hers who raised Centerfold said she needed to be a barrel horse and made sure Smith took her. “I sure didn’t feel like I needed another horse at the time,” Smith said with a little laugh. “I held her up at the end of her 4-year-old year because I wasn’t sure if she could hold up to it all, and that’s all she needed. She won over $200,000 as a futurity horse.” Centerfold, a mare by the late PESI stallion—and barrel racing legend—Dash Ta Fame out of the Proudest Effort mare
Sue Smith and Dashs Centerfold was all the talk at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo, setting an arena record during the final round en route to the title. Smith and Centerfold stopped the clock in a lightning-fast time of 16.89 seconds, which was set only minutes after Summer Kosel had set the record in 16.97 seconds. Photo by Jackie Jensen
12 WPRA NEWS SEPTEMBER 2023
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