Kappie Bryant and her gelding Smooth as Rico Suave, better known as “Pancakes,” claimed the inaugural 2026 Premier Women’s Rodeo Championship Pro Barrel Racing title and a $60,000 payday inside Cowtown Coliseum on May 15, bringing her total PWR earnings to $68,500 on the week.
Bryant guided Pancakes through Rounds 1 and 2 and a Pro Semi-Finals win in Cowtown before stepping up his bit and uncorking a 13.062 in the Championship Round—nearly a tenth faster than runner-up Skyler Nicholas’s 13.152.
“I said, pull your hat down, cowboy. We’re going fast tonight,” Bryant said.
Pancakes, the smaller-framed buckskin Bryant has spent two years telling everyone is underestimated, anchored the breakthrough for the Stephenville-based barrel racer, who entered the week ranked No. 16 on the W26 Pro leaderboard. Pancakes stayed steady through the openers, finishing third in Rounds 1 and 2 with matching 13.261 and 13.259 runs ($1,000 each), then winning the Pro Semi-Finals on Thursday at 13.072 for $3,000. The 3-run aggregate of 39.592 added another $3,500.
It wasn’t just adrenaline pumping in the Finals. Bryant executed a smart strategy across the four rounds that worked in her favor.
“Cowtown and Glen Rose are our arch nemeses,” Bryant said. “The fastest we’ve ever been there before this weekend was a 13.4. So I let my bit out in the first few rounds—I wanted him free, and he was almost too free, but I knew the aggregate would pay the best and guarantee me a spot into the Finals if I could play it smart through four runs that week. (On Friday) I put my bit back up in his mouth, because there was no safetying up in that group of horses.”
Bryant’s always done things a little differently, so it didn’t phase her when some people shook their head at her week-long strategic approach.
She grew up outside Fayetteville, Arkansas, riding hunter jumpers, and didn’t switch to Western riding until she was 14 or 15.
“I was the girl that went to the play days in an English saddle on my warm blood and ran barrels at a lope,” Bryant said. “I was also the girl that when we did the jumping shows, we got in trouble for doing the courses too fast and asking them to raise the jumps.”
Ashton Jones started Pancakes on the pattern, and installed what Bryant called a phenomenal foundation on the gelding.
“Ashton did a freaking phenomenal job,” Bryant said. “I’m obsessed with him.”
Now, the horse who stepped off the trailer at a gas station meetup didn’t look like those pictures. Pancakes had moved on to an interim owner up north and Bryant had arranged a deal trading for a different horse for the buckskin. The gelding backed off the trailer matted, malnourished and smaller than advertised.
“My best friend was with me, and she’s laughing like, ‘you got got on this deal,’” Bryant said. “He looked like a half-Haflinger pony, just so small.”
Bryant and her best friend hauled warm bowls of water from the house and worked the mats out by hand. Then she let him grow. She let him settle in, just playing with him for a year before turning him loose at age-event derbies, where he placed against seasoned derby horses on their third or fourth running season.
The gelding has built his resume at small-arena setups including the NFR, Corpus Christi, and now Cowtown Coliseum, known to regulars as “Northside.” At the 2025 National Finals Rodeo, Halyn Lide rode Pancakes in place of her top horse, Keeper, who was out with EHV-1, and won money on him in Las Vegas.
“I really do think he’s always thought that I saved him. But in turn, I don’t know that I would be the person I am, as happy as I am, in such a good mental state now without everything he did for me in that time….I can’t even afford him, and I own him.”
Kappie Bryant
“Halyn was in such a hard place,” Bryant said. “I knew she needed Pancakes out there.”
That understanding came from personal experience. Through the midst of a divorce and a serious battle with her mental health, Pancakes—and a really great dog—are what helped her find her way back to joy.
“The horses were hard; I didn’t want to be outside,” Bryant admitted. “I didn’t want anything to do with anybody. I was sad and super emotional and my anxiety was through the roof…And I got Pancakes and my dog, Garth Brooks, pretty close to the same time. I’ve never had two animals happier than those two.”
Through that time, Pancakes showed all the grace and forgiveness possible en route to becoming a top barrel horse. But Bryant says Pancakes could have been anything she pointed him at. The athleticism is there, the brain is there, the willingness to try is there. He just happens to be a barrel horse.
“He’s so broke, and he wants to please more than any horse I’ve ever had,” Bryant said.
He has also been the best friend she has ever had on four legs.
“I’ve never had an animal that was truly a best friend I could count on every day,” Bryant said. “Just to be happy, just to be there, to be like, ‘hey, you know what, it’s okay. I’m still on your team….If he was a person, he’d be my favorite person in the world.”
The Arkansas native was still in shock a day after her win, amazed that Pancakes stood on business all week long against a stacked field of horsepower. There was regional, youth, derby, amateur rodeo and ProRodeo talent all under one roof in the knife fight of a rodeo.
“There wasn’t a single girl back there that I would have been upset taking second or third to,” Bryant said. “Not a single one hasn’t put the work in, and I didn’t deserve this more than any of them might have. It’s so fun to do this with people you admire and to chase your goals down with a bunch of women who also have the same goals. Our whole sport has grown so much, and the PWR showed the diversity in the horsepower. We all just keep thanking them for the opportunity and what they’re doing for women in our sport, too.”