Carlee Otero won the Puyallup Rodeo finals on AM Regina George, the palomino mare she calls Regina, for $13,900 on Sept. 13, and left Washington as the No. 1 barrel racer in the world.

Otero left home for the summer with three horses and a schedule for all of them. The schedule did not survive the first month.

“Look, I’m sorry that I said I had a plan, but I don’t,” Otero said. “I’m just out here winging it and honestly letting the horses tell me which one wants to run that day.”

Puyallup is what that looks like in practice. She ran two horses across the week and they split it between them. Blingolena, the sorrel gelding she calls Sly, ran both rounds of Set 2 and was second in the first one at 13.92 for $2,633.

The decision to start on him was made from the stands.

“I knew from the beginning, after watching the first set of girls, the ground was so good and the times were so fast and consistent that I wanted to run Sly just because he’s working so good this year, and I wanted to get him in a smaller pen with the NFR coming up,” Otero said. “So I knew right off the bat that I was going to run him at least the first go. And then when he did good that first go, I was like, ‘You know what? He feels good. I’m just going to run the second go.’”

That second go cost him the round. Otero let a rein slip going to the first barrel, got him back around it and still came out of Set 2 with an average good enough to advance, third on 28.22.

Then it rained.

“I was trying to decide between Regina and Twix, but those little pens just aren’t Twix’s cup of tea,” Otero said of Cathys Kandy. “So I was like, I’m just going to have to run Regina.”

Keeping Sly out of the mud was not a close call. He came back this year from a fractured knee that 11 veterinarians said would keep him from ever running barrels again.

“I definitely wasn’t going to take a risk at running Sly in the mud and getting hurt and all that after he’s just coming back,” Otero said.

What made her willing to send Regina was the ground crew.

“With Randy (Spraggins) there, and I’d already talked to him and he already had a game plan, he had the roller out there, he was ready to seal that,” Otero said. “I was like, Randy will have it at least safe, even if it’s not fast.”

She drew sixth in the semifinal and, for once, was glad to be that far down.

“It was really in my favor at that point that I was at the bottom of the ground, because I had a lot of confidence by the time it was my turn to go,” she said.

Regina ran 14.09 in the semifinal, second to Michelle Alley, and the two of them advanced along with Megan McLeod-Sprague and Lisa Lockhart. In the four-woman final she ran 13.85 for the win and the $13,900. Alley was second, Lockhart third and McLeod-Sprague fourth.

The mare was less pleased about the conditions than her rider, and not in the way a palomino’s reputation would suggest. “She is a princess,” Otero said. Between the semifinal and the final, Regina stomped until her boots came off, then stood while Otero scrubbed the mud off her belly with a borrowed pair of gloves. “And then she was happy. So she just didn’t want to be dirty.”

Riding for the situation

Asked what she was doing as a jockey to put Regina in position through the semifinal and the final, Otero went to the dirt rather than the pattern.

“You have to watch the ground even when it’s not wet and ride your horse according to the ground,” she said. “It’s not very often that my horses take bad falls or anything, knock on wood, because I do keep them up and square.”

Up and square, she said, is “sitting right in the middle of them, looking down their neck and in between their ears and staying that way the entire run, not letting them drop or me letting myself start leaning with them in the turns.” Otero described the seat she goes to when the ground is questionable. “I always say at that point I’m riding more like a cutter or an English person.”

In the semifinal, that was the whole job. The bull riders were on the back of the chutes getting ready, Regina balked at them going to the second barrel and Otero thought she was going to take a hard right in a building with no room to give.

“I just had to stay patient and calm and not panic and get her back in that position,” she said. “After we got through that, I knew that four man round, I could send her in there and she would be very confident.”

Letting the horse pick

The winging-it answer is less mystical than it sounds. Regina, Otero said, will hand over the answer at the trailer.

“Regina is the most tell-on-herself horse that I own,” Otero said. “If she unloads and she doesn’t go straight to water and she kind of hem haws around and drags her feet, she’s not going to clock. We’re going to go out there and we’re going to be a second off. And so if she unloads and she’s spry and she’s ready to drink and she’s picking on the other horses, then I’m going to run her.”

Twix is the workhorse, ready every day. Sly wants to go every day, which is the reason Otero has to decide for him. Otero, who lives in Weatherford, Texas, with her husband, team roper Michael Otero, does not call herself a trainer.

“I’m not a proclaimed trainer, I’m more of a jockey,” she said. “I have to learn to ride other people’s styles and different styled horses. I’ve always taken pride in knowing that I’m not a one-way street. I think that’s what gives me a little bit of an edge at this level.”

“I think this has been my most consistent year, even though I don’t have a ton of first place wins this year,” Otero said. “I have constantly placed. And that to me gets you to the finals and gets you into averages far more than just winning first place every now and then and pulling good runs out.”

The three of them are the same age, and she has a couple of years of rodeo on each. AM Regina George (A Smooth Guy x Oro Rose x Frenchmans Guy) is a 2018 palomino mare bred by Dean and Jessie Domann. Blingolena (Blazin Jetolena x Dash Of Bling x Dash Ta Fame) is a 2018 sorrel gelding bred by Busby Quarter Horse LLC. Cathys Kandy (The Kandyman x Frenchmans Perkette x Frenchmans Guy) is a 2018 buckskin mare bred by Cathy Geary. All three are registered to Otero.

• PROFile: The Carlee Otero Story
• Carlee Otero Rocks First NFR in 10 Years, Competes With Fractured Pelvis
• It’s Working: Carlee Otero and Blingolena Add Old Fort Days Title to Resume
• Fetch Happened: Carlee Otero Scores Her Third Win of the Week on AM Regina George

What is left

Otero took the world lead at Puyallup and still holds it. She sits at $202,389 on BarrelRacing.com’s projected standings through Sept. 20, ahead of Hayle Gibson-Stillwell at $195,195. Gibson-Stillwell was fifth at the North Dakota Roughrider Cup in Mandan; Otero did not place there.

Michael entered her everywhere for the fall. After Puyallup she turned out of nearly all of it, and Sioux Falls is next. She is also weighing a run on Twix at the Gold Rush in Rapid City, S.D., to get the mare a run inside before Las Vegas.

“The horses will be fresh,” Otero said. “They’ll just get to be horses before Sioux Falls, instead of driving to Albuquerque and all that. So I’m pleased with my decision.”

After the Pink Buckle she picks up CT Delight (Traffic Guy x Our Genuine Delight x Dash Ta Fame), the 2021 buckskin mare she owns and Dacota Monk has been winning on, bred by McColee Land & Livestock LLC. She has Hempstead and Rosenberg entered to get the mare’s feet wet at rodeos.

“I would love to stay number one, and if that’s what’s meant to be, that’s great,” Otero said. “But we all know when you get to Vegas, anything can happen. So I’m going to enjoy the number one position and then just try to keep that as long as I can.”