LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Only the best of the best compete in the American Rodeo. 20-year-old Havana Wester and her horse, Toretto, are in that elite group.
"When it's run time, he hears his name through the loudspeakers, he knows," Wester said. "It's time to go. That horse is gone."
Wester got on her first horse at four years old. By the age of six, she was winning Saddlebred competitions.
But she said it didn't feel quite right.
"I was like, Dad, I want to barrel race," she recalled. "This is boring. I'm not running fast enough. We're not going anywhere."
The first time she competed in barrel racing, she certainly got the feeling she was chasing after.
"Imagine you're parachuting and you can't find your cord to pull your parachute," she laughed. "That's what it's like. You're running around those barrels and we're coming hard and we're going fast. You usually, most of the time, find the cord before you reach the ground."
To excel in barrel racing though, she needed a great horse. She found Toretto online, admitting he was not only ugly but also so difficult he made a vet tech quit their job. But Havana stuck with him.
"I don't have the money to go out and buy a nice finished horse but I can make one," she said. "And so I did."
"The dedication, the consistency, getting that bond together, it's unbelievable," Kentucky Cowtown Arena manager, Amy Bailey, said. "People don't see the time that Havana puts into the horses behind the scenes."
It's a lot of time. She regularly works with Toretto and other horses from 6 a.m. to midnight.
"I might not be the smartest or the strongest but I will outwork everybody," Wester said.
All of that hard work is paying off because she's heading to the American Rodeo. She is one of the youngest competitors.
"I'm going to give it everything I have in me because an opportunity like this is once in a lifetime and there's no second chances," she said.
Regionals are in Lexington next week. Only 95 people qualified to compete in Lexington. Tulsa and Heber City, Utah are also hosting Regionals.
If Wester does well in Lexington, she heads to Texas for the finals where she'll have a shot at $1 million.
