Adios Pantalones and his owner Tricia Aldridge aren’t just famous on social media, they broke another earnings record in real life when they crossed the $445,000 futurity earnings mark, plus crossed the $500,000 total earnings mark during the stallion’s 4-year-old season.
The stallion Adios Pantalones has captured the hearts and attention of barrel racers around the world, thanks in part to his accounts and owner Tricia Aldridge’s Red Hot Running Horses’ combined hundreds of thousands of followers across social media.
But here’s the thing—impressions don’t mean a thing when it comes to winning races.
Both negative and positive opinions have poured in from around the globe, here are the hard facts of what Adios Pantalones, the 2020 Tres Seis stallion out of standout mare French Bar Belle has been up to since November 2023.
Spoiler alert, he’s claimed an impressive 14 futurity champion or reserve titles and nine more top-five placings so far.
Table of contents
November 2023
The starting goal: “We started at the (BFA $uper$takes) last year,” Aldridge said. “And people thought I was crazy for saying our goal was to hit $300,000. But at that point, you know everybody’s just watching to see what he’s going to do.”
The result was a reserve finish in the $uper$takes and a top-three finish in the Juvenile.
“It was sink or swim, and he never batted an eye at the pressure. He made three solid runs and did his job from the start. I’ve never put any pressure on him, I run him in an o-ring, I don’t wear spurs and I don’t need a whip.”
Tricia Aldridge
December 2023
After the BFA, Adios went on to cash in at both the OKC Futurity in Oklahoma City, and the Jingle Bell Classic in Perry, Georgia. He placed deep in OKC, then claimed his first futurity win in Perry and banked Open earnings with the toughest East Coast horses.
“He won about $85,000 in 2023.” – Aldridge said.
January, February 2024
Adios powered into 2024 with placings at every major futurity he attended. He was strong in the Texas run, placing at the Lone Star Shootout and the Golden Buckle (the duo decided to skip Dinosaur Classic on this run).
“He was still figuring out how to run,” Aldridge said. “One run he hit on his front end and really bounced me to the front, but he stayed underneath me and tried to help me. It took me a while to get my confidence on him and leveled off. But he’s always been so honest.”
A trip to Arizona brought a pair of wins at the SVE Open and Royal Crown, where Adios encountered his first standard pattern in Buckeye.
“He’s a very aware horse,” Aldridge said. “So I can trust him. He stays square, doesn’t cheat, doesn’t want to do anything wrong. I just turned the first on that standard and pitched it to him, and he put himself right in the hole and drove to the second.”
“I’ve received a lot of negativity toward how I manage (Adios). They say it’s bad horsemanship, but I believe it’s ultimate horsemanship to keep a horse happy, healthy, willing and managed well for an entire year. He’s gotten stronger, more experienced, he’s grown so much, and it’s because I let him be him.”
Tricia Aldridge
March, April, May 2024
After Arizona, Aldridge came back to Texas to launch her spring run. She won back-to-back at The Elite and The Patriot futurities—and slowly, the comments turned from mocking to curious about this yellow stallion and owner in the purple hat.
“It’s hard to ride a winner sometimes,” Aldridge said. “You want to do what’s best for them. But things really set in at the Royal Crown in Guthrie. He’s not just a great horse, he’s my buddy, and he’s still a stallion. There was a little bit of ground trouble early on at that race, and I got in my head. I held him in the alley—something I never do. I hit a barrel to win the round, then came back and he did great the second round. Had I not held him up and hit that barrel, we could have won that futurity, and I held him back from doing that. I was disappointed in myself.”
After a bout with colic that nearly had the stallion under the knife, Aldridge decided to get out of her and Adios’ way, and headed West with a renewed mindset.
“Any recognition I get is for him,” Aldridge said. “So I decided if I’m going to ride and send him down the alley, I need to send him. He knows how to handle himself, I need to let him work or just not run, then trust in God’s bigger plan for him.”
Summer 2024
The month of June was a major one in the Adios story. He won the Run at the Rose Futurity in Montrose, then came back to place deep all over the Colorado Classic. But most notably, he crossed that $300,000 mark in lifetime earnings, besting RR Mistakelly record from 2018 and claiming the all-time winningest futurity record.
“Trust me, I know people do think I’m crazy,” Aldridge said. “But if you say it, you can make it happen. You just have to keep that goal there and stay focused. People get so timid, but whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
Next up was Ruby Bucke West in South Jordan, but after soreness popped up in Adios in Utah, Aldridge made the last-minute decision to turn out and drive back home.
“I took him home for six weeks this summer,” Aldridge said. “I think after the first week, he wanted to come back to work. I took some time to ride with Matt Mills, the reiner, and it really helped. I found a different plan, learned how to make the mechanics work better. It helped me learn how to help Adios by making him more four-wheel drive, keep his front feet moving more.”
Adios also placed deep at Royal Crown’s Rock Springs, Wyoming, edition in August before his fall run began.
“After we hit $300,000, the pressure was off. He’d proven himself, we did what I said we’d do, so I said ‘Hey, why not? Let’s double it.'”
Tricia Aldridge
September-November 2024
Aldridge won more than one Breeders Challenge qualifier throughout the year, so she headed to the Breeders Challenge Finale in Fort Worth in September with a new goal in mind.
After earning some coin in Cowtown, Aldridge went on to win the inaugural Young Guns League Futurity during Pink Buckle week, plus placed in the Pink Buckle futurity and Open.
Add a WPRA Futurity championship and a qualification into the Cardholder’s Race finale, and a strong showing just this week at the Barrel Futurities of America futurity, and next thing we all knew, Adios Pantalones had creeped across the $500,000 mark, and climbing.
The numbers are in.
So here we are, a year into the Adios Pantalones story, and the numbers have rolled in (checked with Aldridge and Tanya Randall, the industry’s unofficial, but most trusted recordkeeper).
Adios Pantalones has earned $458,120.61 in straight futurity and juvenile earnings since November 15, 2023.
This means that he will surpass Hello Stella as the all-time leading futurity horse. Hello Stella’s incredible season happened in 2021 with trainer, jockey and owner Sharin Hall. Her recorded earnings in futurity and juvenile strictly were $445,029, previously the futurity earnings record. The mare also set the highest total earnings, (including Open money) were at $544,196.
“You can’t ever take anything away from that stallion,” Hall said. “He’s a great horse—I even bred my mare, Mirakul to him. He’s had an outstanding year, and Tricia’s done a great job with him across the board.”
Aldridge’s records show Adios just $19,000 short of that goal, with a few events left to go as she looks to close out the year strong and hit her $600,000 goal. They’re at $525,298.27 as of November 24, 2024.
But she’s not stopping after that.
What’s next?
“I want him to be the first stallion to win $1 million,” Aldridge said. “He is special, and I hope the world truly sees him. I’ve worked hard to share him, and people have just fallen in love with him. I can’t ask for more.”
The team struck a nerve with much of the barrel racing industry in 2024. For some, it helped awaken their ability to dream and shed the fear of going public with their goals. For others, it sparked rage, even hatred. Seeing a self-made owner with a small program lighting the industry on fire—with a horse and a style that don’t fit the ‘normal,’ industry standards all of the time—can be enough to bring out the best and the worst of the sport.
So, it may be true that impressions don’t equate to dollars won. But it’s also true that opinions do not, either. What Aldridge and Adios Pantalones have done in the past calendar year will be something that the industry will be talking about for a long time.
But it wasn’t some secret formula that can never be done again, and Aldridge will be the first to convey that to others.
She bought young Adios from a great program with Leslie Bailey Martin.
He was by a leading stallion with Tres Seis who was enrolled in many incentive programs, maximizing his earning potential.
He was out of an outstanding Frenchmans Guy mare, French Bar Belle, an earner and producer.
Aldridge sent him to the right colt starter with Rodney Yost and set out with a clear end goal in mind. She put in the training time and the work hauling, then went into overdrive creating a brand around for the stallion.
She spoke her goals into the industry, and the industry spoke back.
Whilst rumors and fear swirl across the sport of corporate takeovers and the loss of the “little guy,” Aldridge put her money where her mouth was and put a talented horse on track to potentially be the stuff of legends.
