Paige Jones made her first NFR appearance in 2023, and she’s doing everything possible to ensure she and Famous Hayday, “Bazinga,” return to Las Vegas in 2024, including clinching the 2024 Dodge City Roundup victory on Aug. 4.
The duo won the first round in 17.44 seconds, split seventh in the second round of competition and entered Sunday’s short round in the No. 2 position in the aggregate. After winning the Finals in 17.27, Jones earned the aggregate victory and a total earnings of $8,026. She also popped up in the Douglas County Fair and Rodeo results in Castle Rock, Colorado, for a $2,285 sixth-place finish. For a cowgirl that’s been flirting with top 15 territory all summer long—sometimes above the No. 15 cut line, sometimes outside of the NFR bubble—those wins should help her breathe easily on the right side of the WPRA cut line with just eight weeks left in the regular season.
- S2 Ep 15: Paige Jones on The Money Barrel
- A Conversation with Legendary 11x World Champion Barrel Racer Charmayne James
The Bazinga story
Watching her run, it’s easy to tell that nobody knows a horse better than Oklahoma’s Paige Jones knows her 12-year-old bay gelding. In fact, his name is tattooed on her wrist.
Bazinga – the horse that carried her to her first NFR last year – is built like a rope horse, and Jones actually runs him in a Petska roping bit with a chain port. After all, he’s by the late Dinero (PC Frenchmans Hayday). His registered name is Famous Hayday because he’s out of Jaxsons Olympic Fame. The extended Youree family’s mare was by a Dash Ta Fame stallion out of a Beduino/Easy Jet mare, and her bottom side was straight old-school racing from Easy Jet to Royal Charger to Go Man Go and Rocket Bar.
Jones, now 22, was a freshman in high school whose good horse was hurt when her family approached Janae Massey to see if she knew of anything available. Massey didn’t then have her 5-year-old Bazinga for sale, but was willing to let him go to the Jones family. She’d already placed him fifth in the 2015 BFA Superstakes Slot as a 3-year-old.
“He was very full of himself that day I tried him,” Jones said. “Little did I know that was only the beginning of it.”
The two fit together so well that Jones won the high-school state barrel racing championship on him and then in 2020, during Covid, won WPRA Resistol Rookie of the Year honors. Her other horse, High Cotton Lane, was one they’d bought at the Heritage Place sale as a yearling and Jones trained. She won the 2018 BFA World Championship on him as a 4-year-old. That’s why his name, too, is tattooed on her wrist.
“They’re the two horses that changed my life,” she said simply. “Bazinga stays really put-together in his runs. He’s amazing, but you never watch him and think, ‘Wow, that was unbelievable’. Cotton has moves on the backside that make me think, ‘Wow!’ He leaves me behind all the time and gives 200 percent every single run.”
Cotton’s body doesn’t always hold up, however. In addition to his penchant for overreaching, he tends to constantly have bruises, cuts or something in his eye that have kept him sidelined a lot. Jones finished 17th in the world in 2022, and last year Bazinga stepped up and took her to the NFR.
The bay’s forte is big, open arenas like Cody, Wyoming, Jones said, but she still thought he’d love the Thomas and Mack Center. After all, she’d ran him at Northside plenty and he always liked that. Plus, he gains confidence in a pen and usually gets stronger. Sure enough, Jones’ four fastest times at the ’23 NFR were clocked in the last four rounds.
“Sometimes we struggle in slack,” she said. “He’s kind of a show boater and likes when people are watching, so he definitely tries harder in a perf.”
He also buddies up on the road, and Jones has found it much easier hauling three horses this year instead of two (when one is left at the trailer alone).
“Bazinga is very, very quirky,” she said. “I get separation anxiety if I go out to eat, because I don’t know what he’s doing when I’m not there. For instance, he doesn’t like washracks, and hates water. I have to trick him to give him a bath. It takes two people to hold him, so he doesn’t get washed a lot.”
A couple of years ago, Jones picked up another Dinero horse from Massey. This one, a palomino mare, was called Penny. Jones didn’t catch the significance, because she’d never seen an episode of TV’s The Big Bang Theory.
“Of course, now I’m on Season 8 and loving it, and I even named my other new horse Sheldon,” Jones said.
The one she bought a couple of months ago is out of the NFR mare RC Back In Black by a running-bred stud. She’s still trying to get with him, she said. In the meantime, Jones had a decent Fourth in which she placed at Livingston and Mandan before making the finals at Calgary. Skimming the barrels on the road means she does do a little work to free Bazinga up on the backsides of barrels to keep him moving forward.
“Even at Calgary, I was working him by taking him multiple strides past the barrel,” she said. “I didn’t feel like working him, but I thought, I’m going to feel dumb if I don’t. Because he gets so turny once he knows an arena. He was amazing at the NFR and so consistent, but I had to do a lot of work to get him around the barrels. If I do hit one, it’s because he rolled over the top, and not because he was trying to be bad.”
Like last year, Jones again ranks in the Top 20 on the horse that’s so easy for her to ride she rarely even has to think, she said.
“He’s super solid,” Jones added. “He’s my right-hand man; we fit like a glove.”
Dodge City Roundup barrel racing results 2024
First round: 1. Paige Jones, 17.44 seconds, $2,291; 2. Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi, 17.50, $1,948; 3. Loralee Ward, 17.51, $1,604; 4. Tarryn Lee, 17.52, $1,375; 5. Hailey Kinsel, 17.53, $1,146; 6. Cindy Patrick, 17.56, $802; 7. Katelyn Scott, 17.61, $573; 8. Megan Albrecht, 17.62, $458; 9. Tana Renick, 17.64, $401; 10. Fallon Taylor, 17.70, $344; 11. Emily Beisel, 17.73, $286; 12. Jessica Routier, 17.74, $229.
Second round: 1. (tie) Emily Beisel and Tracy Nowlin, 17.24 seconds, $2,119 each; 3. Chelsie Shoop, 17.32, $1,604; 4. (tie) Hailey Kinsel and Kathleen Menard, 17.33, $1,260 each; 6. Cindy Patrick, 17.36, $802; 7. (tie) Paige Jones and Tana Renick, 17.45, $516 each; 9. Kallie Gates, 17.46, $401; 10. Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi, 17.49, $344; 11. Tarryn Lee, 17.52, $286; 12. Austyn Tobey, 17.54, $229.
Finals: 1. Paige Jones, 17.25 seconds, $1,782; 2. Emily Beisel, 17.27, $1,337; 3. Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi, 17.41, $891; 4. (tie) Tana Renick and Chelsie Shoop, 17.45, $223 each.
Average: 1. Paige Jones, 52.14 seconds on three head, $3,437; 2. Emily Beisel, 52.24, $2,921; 3. Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi, 52.40, $2,406; 4. Tana Renick, 52.54, $2,062; 5. Chelsie Shoop, 52.63, $1,718; 6. Tarryn Lee, 52.67, $1,203; 7. Loralee Ward, 52.84, $859; 8. (tie) Tracy Nowlin and Kathleen Menard, 52.86, $644 each; 10. Megan Albrecht, 54.02, $516; 11. Hailey Kinsel, 57.26, $430; 12. Cindy Patrick, 58.40, $344.
