TRIPLE THREAT Pozzi Tonozzi Sets Regular Season Earnings Record, Single Season Earnings Record and Most Money Won at NFR by WPRA Member En Route To Third World Title By Ted Harbin O n the turntable that is professional barrel racing, this record has been played before. It wasn’t exactly déjà vu, but Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi repeated what she’d done 16 years before when she won her
first Montana Silversmiths gold buckle. She set the regular-season earnings record, the single-season earnings mark and earned the most money of any cowgirl at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. The 2007 earnings were $259,713. The financial rewards in 2023 nearly doubled it. She finished with $496,499, with about $226,000 coming over the 10-rounds of ProRodeo’s grand finale in Las Vegas. Pozzi Tonozzi was so dominant this season that she won the world title by more than $150,000 over the reserve champion, Lisa Lockhart. “This one was different than the other two,” said Pozzi Tonozzi, who also won the gold buckle in 2009. “It was definitely mine to lose going into the finals. I had such a lead with this one. With the other two, it came down to the last round, but I like doing it this way much better. “I also doubted myself the other times because I didn’t know how my horses would work. Stitch wasn’t great in that arena, and with Duke, you just didn’t know. I had a pretty good idea Benny was going to be great in there, and I had so many backup plans with the other two horses this year that I just went out there and had fun. It’s just like how my whole year went.” Benny’s registered name is Jets Top Gun, an 8-year-old sorrel gelding owned by Busby Quarter Horses and trained by Janna Brown Beam. Benny is sired by Blazin Jetolena out of GL Famous First Lady. She rode the talented red racer through nine of the 10 rounds in which she competed. The only round she didn’t was in Round 6, which was a special
Wednesday morning performance that was scheduled as a make-up show after the first night was cancelled by a deadly shooting on the UNLV campus Wednesday, Dec. 6. Instead, Pozzi Tonozzi ran Babe On The Chase, a 12-year-old sorrel mare owned by Teton Ridge; Birdie had been a key reason for the Texan’s dominating campaign. “I went out to Las Vegas to have fun,” said Pozzi Tonozzi, a 17-time Wrangler NFR qualifier from Lampasas, Texas. “There was not much pressure; I didn’t have to win to pay the bills next week because I had won so much over the year. It was definitely a nice change to have fun and enjoy being at the NFR. “There’s definitely been years that I have not enjoyed it.” The cowgirl originally from Victoria, Texas, clinched her third world championship after the eighth round. That allowed her to enjoy the final two nights of the ProRodeo season with ease. The only thing left was to clinch the Wrangler NFR average title. A downed barrel on the final night deflated that and eliminated her chance of crossing half a million dollars in earnings for a season. She settled for second in the aggregate race to Lockhart. Still, that was worth $63,889, a hefty sum. The difference between first and second, though, was almost $15,000. “I didn’t want to hit that barrel, but nine runs on a horse in that arena is a lot,” she said. “I was just thankful that I got to win second in the average. I was a little bit bummed about it, and I thought, ‘OK, Brittany, don’t let this take away from what you did all year. You just won the world; a downed barrel to be second in the average is not the end of the world.’ “I had to let it go. It was a phenomenal two weeks out there. I wish Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi and Jets Top Gun “Benny” won the seventh round in a time of 13.47 seconds to inch closer to the 2023 world title. WPRA photo by Kenneth Springer
Brittany Pozzi in her 20th year as a WPRA member raced her way to a record breaking year in which she placed in eight out of 10 rounds at the Wrangler NFR. A downed barrel in the 10th round kept her from winning a third average title but she still finished second in the average in a time of 141.18 on 10 runs. WPRA photo by Kenneth Springer
12 WPRA NEWS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
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