Kassie Mowry and Force The Goodbye, “Jarvis,” the 2024 AQHA/Nutrena Horse of the Year, earned the Round 4 victory in 13.43 seconds on Dec. 9 at the NFR, worth $33,687.
Mowry looked calm and collected from the time she entered the camera frame, but took advantage of the space in the tunnel her No. 13 position on the ground awarded to use the space like her own round pen.
“I turned some circles in the alley,” Kassie Mowry said. “I was trying to keep that forward motion with Jarvis, he wants to ‘V’ that first barrel—that’s what happened in (Round 1) when we hit it. I was loosening him up because he got a little strong. But I was really proud of him for checking back to me when I asked him to wait. I felt like we got a good start and had a great first line and first barrel because of it.”
Mowry smoked her first turn, then shut the clock off with a straight shot across the pen to a crispy second barrel.
“I squared him up a little bit going into it,” Mowry said. “I knew he was going to be tight but I just had to trust him and let him do it.”
While the crowd held their breath, Jarvis banked off a rut on the third barrel and finished a perfect run before running out of the pen. They erupted when he came across the line, while Mowry let out a victorious fist bump in the alleyway.
“It was all kind of a blur. But those are usually the best runs, when it feels like a blur.”
Kassie Mowry
Something that isn’t a blur, however, are the years Mowry spent working out how to make Jarvis’ odd style clock on the biggest stages. It’s something she’d worked on with her late fiance, Michael Boone, since Jarvis was in his 2-year-old year.
“He does have a stiffer style,” Mowry said. “But he doesn’t take advantage of it. That’s just how he balances and it’s his style, I just try to finesse it a little bit. But I’ve had to change my timing and how I ask him, knowing that he’s going to be straighter and come back through himself, so I have to kind of wait on him a little bit in.”
Mowry’s recorded competitive lifetime earnings are well in excess of $5 million, but she’s still known as one of the most dedicated students of the game.
“You’ve got to keep evolving and getting better, you can’t be complacent. After the first round, I called (Danyelle Campbell) and some of my other friends and said ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ I just want to do the best I can by my horse. And they can see different things.”
When Mowry asked for feedback, her friend and multi-million dollar earning jockey, Danyelle Campbell had a drill for her to try out. It was one Mowry had tried in years prior on CP He Will Be Epic, “Will,” and involves turning a partial first barrel at a slow pace, then going off the barrel and toward the timer line, before completing the misshapen circle and spacing the horse off the turn again.
“It’s just asking him to take another step, free up, keep moving forward right there so he can’t make that V. In this arena, they tend to slide up and by the first barrel, and you hit it on the backside…it’s a very common thing that a lot of horses do here.”
Mowry explained that the angle, combined with the amount of slide usually in the dirt at the Thomas & Mack makes it more difficult than spectators may realize from the top view of the arena.
Mowry will return in Round 5 to look to close the gap between herself and No. 1 in the World Standings, Hailey Kinsel. Keep up with rolling world standings and daily results here.
