Top Flight, a Top Bareback Horse
- December 9, 2020
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- Ruth Nicolaus
Posted in: Featured, Rodeo, Uncategorized
If you were watching the Wrangler NFR during round five, on Dec. 7, you saw the 2020 Pendleton Whisky “Let ‘er Buck” Bareback Horse of the Year and the round winner, Clayton Biglow with a winning ride.
Top Flight, a sixteen-year-old bay mare with four white socks and a white spot on her head, carried Biglow to an 89- point win.
The mare, owned by Pickett Pro Rodeo of Fairfield, Texas, is one of Cullen and Mandy Pickett’s favorite animals in their rodeo herd, which also includes bulls.
Biglow, who is from Clements, Calif. and is the 2019 bareback world champ, told the PRCA in a news release, “that horse feels like a dream and rides like a Cadillac. She’s special, and I love to see my name next to her. If you do your job, you’re going to win first.”
She’s the ideal bucking horse that cowboys want to get on, Cullen said. “She has got the perfect temperament. She doesn’t want you to pet on her but she’s as kind as you could ask one to be.”
Top Flight makes her presence known at the ranch at Fairfield, halfway between Dallas and Houston. “She doesn’t pick on anybody and nobody picks on her, but she doesn’t take anything off anybody, either. She’s strong willed but easy going. If a guy had ten more like her it wouldn’t be fair.”
She’s honest and loves to buck, Cullen said. At the Ft. Smith, Ark. rodeo one year, they forgot to set the flank on her. She bucked anyway. Four-time world champion Bobby Mote had her, “and we were in a hurry and never set the flank. When I flanked her, it was so loose it went under Bobby’s butt, but he was still 88 and a half on her.”
Another time, at the Ft. Worth rodeo, she turned out of the chute backwards. “It was a freak deal,” he said, “and I didn’t want to hurt her, so I didn’t flank her.” Even with the flank not set, her rider scored 89 points to win the round.
“She bucks in spite of all the mistakes,” he said. “She’s idiot-proof.”
She’s also gotten her owners a lot of rodeos as well. As rodeos added “shoot-out” rounds or finals rounds, she was the kind of horse rodeo committees were looking for. “She was the kind of horse that fit the format, what they built it around. We got to go to places because they wanted her,” he said.
One of Top Flight’s colts, Night Flight, will also buck at this year’s Wrangler NFR.
Top Flight was one of Jim and Maggie Zinser’s horses, nicknamed the “Michigan Monsters,” that the Zinsers sold to Cullen. She was a four-year-old at the time and came with the rest of the Zinser herd, after the Zinsers got out of the rodeo business.
The 16 year old mare carried Clayton Biglow to a round win at the 2020 Wrangler NFR. Photo by Helen Pickett.
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Posted in: Featured, Rodeo, Uncategorized
About Ruth Nicolaus
Ruth is a rodeo publicist who loves the Great Plains and its people. She can be found behind the chutes at a rodeo, working in her flower garden, or cooking, some of her favorite things to do....