“Dang, I wish this could have gotten started a little earlier,” said one of the greatest rope-horse producers of all-time.
Bobby Lewis was talking about the explosion of futurities recently with some other industry veterans. In fact, Lewis did train 4-year-old rope horses 45 years ago, and even won futurities. But there were no five-figure paydays. They didn’t survive the USTRC. And they’re nowhere on the internet.
The hands-down hotbed of young rope horses in the 1970s and ’80s was Nebraska. Howard Pitzer’s sandhills-raised Two Eyed Jack babies were in demand and dominated 4-and-under competitions. Trainers then put horses in the AQHA’s roping classes to pad cumulative year-end point totals in hopes of winning a new Jeep Wagoneer to hook onto their bumper-pull. But futurities were solely to promote bloodlines.
That’s why Pitzer launched one of the first team roping futurities in Grand Island, Nebraska, in the 1970s, to go along with the AQHA futurities in other events. It prompted the giant Silver Classic show at Omaha’s Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum to start having one, too.
“We took about 20 head of horses from Haythorns to the AkSar-Ben futurity,”
