Anyone need a heart-warming duo to cheer on at this year’s futurities?
Look no further than a 66-year-old barrel racer who overcame serious injuries to get a second wind aboard her new 5-year-old mare by Reliance Ranches stallion Coronado Cartel.
Connie Wyatt placed fifth at the Dixie Classic Futurity in Hurricane, Utah, March 13–15, among competitors like Terri Wood Gates, Kristin Weaver Brown and Kim Schulze. Wyatt, who lives in Clifton, Colorado, with her husband, Steve, bought her ride in October and said the Dixie Classic marked just the 11th and 12th competitive runs of the mare’s life.
“It’s just effortless for her to leave barrels,” Wyatt said. “She’s so fast coming out of a barrel—that’s where she has her magic. And she’s so smart, she just picks it up and wants to please you.”
Queeen of the Cartel is brown like her sire, Coronado Cartel, who stands at Lazy E Ranch. He’s by the Hall of Fame racing sire Corona Cartel and out of the Mr Jess Perry daughter First Carolina (SI 106). On the track, Coronado Cartel had racked up six wins and three second-place finishes by the time he was 3, earning nearly $500,000.
As a sire, he’s enrolled in Future Fortunes and Ruby Buckle, and has produced money-winning barrel horses like Coronado’s Barbie for Kare Serpa, None Like You ridden by Kelly Yates, and TM Coronado Rose for Kaelyn Craddock. Another of his sons, Savannah Hays’ 7-year-old SR Roman Cartel, has earned $64,000 running barrels, while Jennifer Geerligs’ and Kaitlin Schuck’s offspring Does To Me and Think Of Me First had earned $42,692 and $32,081, respectively, at just 6 years old this spring.
Queeen of the Cartel was bred by 70 Ranch and won her racetrack debut by three-quarters of a length. At 3 years old, she had about 60 days on the barrel pattern before going through the Ruby Buckle Sale. Whitney Diamond of Utah bought her but hadn’t done much with her, Wyatt said.
“I absolutely fell in love with her,” Wyatt said. “When I got her, it was clear she’d never had a treat and didn’t even know how to graze grass. It seemed like she’d always been stalled.”
Wyatt nicknamed the mare “Queen Esther” after the Bible character who was passed around quite a bit, but was smart and beautiful and brave, thereby saving the Jews of Persia. Since Esther was still a bit green, Wyatt rode her bareback a lot and worked on getting the filly softer, but said the mare was “super smart” and understood things the first time.
“I saw a thread on Facebook about sons and daughters of Coronado Cartel, and people raved about them,” she recalled. “They’re really smart, and once you show them what to do, they’ll do it every time. Super reliable.”
Wyatt grew up training and breezing racehorses on the track for her uncle as a teenager. But she got married halfway through her college rodeo career and wasn’t able to ride a barrel horse for the duration of her first marriage or for decades while working and raising two kids.
Forty years after she last stepped on a barrel horse, at about 60 years old, she started up again. On her first trip back to town, she placed sixth overall at the race but didn’t know what the different “Ds” meant.
She’s caught up now. And what makes Wyatt’s success on Queeen of the Cartel even more special is that she’s overcome serious injuries to get back in the arena.
In February during the worst year of COVID-19, she was in Arizona making a run at the Big Tree Arena when her horse hit a barrel hard enough to break Wyatt’s lower leg and send her to the hospital. The initial surgery required correction, leading to additional procedures, including a knee replacement and repair of her tibia. After months of recovery, she returned to riding—only to suffer another fall that broke her wrist and femur in the same leg.
“I’m bionic from the hip down on that side,” Wyatt said. “And at my age, I don’t want to miss more time. So I feel blessed at every race to even be there.”
Her gratitude to be turning barrels at this point in her life, aboard such a special mare as Queeen of the Cartel, is boundless.
“She’s just so smooth turning, and then just walks out of the arena without being high or nervous,” Wyatt said. “I’m so thrilled with her, I can’t stand it.”