Page 30 - BSR 2022

SPEEDLINES
Lenas Sugar Daddy, the sire of Blazin Jetolena.
“But the highlight of my career with Jennie was earning the WBRA Reserve Championship in 1993. Which was good for me. We taught ourselves and we didn’t come from horse families. We did it ourselves.” – Sue Rist
to be a professional rodeo barrel racer. But the highlight of my career with Jennie was earning the WBRA Reserve Championship in 1993. Which was good for me. We taught ourselves and we didn’t come from horse families. We did it ourselves.”
The next stage in the story came with a move. “We decided to move to Arizona,” Sue said. “We sold our place and packed up our horses and moved to Arizona. We continued barrel racing down here. Jennie got arthritis in one of her knees and her career dwindled down. We raced her here and there. Then, we decided to breed her and found a local stallion that was a son of
Doc O’Lena. He was just about 10 miles down the road. He was owned by an older couple, and she was a barrel racer. He was a roper and they had quite a story about how they got the horse. They knew Shorty Freeman, who owned Doc O’Lena. This horse had an injury and couldn’t compete, and so they ended up with the horse. This is Jet’s sire, Lenas Sugar Daddy, and he was out of a granddaughter of Sugar Bars. We knew that Sugar Bars is one of the great barrel racing lines, so he was perfect for what we wanted. We bred the mare, and she had a filly that was premature, and we were unable to save her. So, we got a rebreed and she had Jet.”
The story has a twist. “We sent her
to Montana to be a broodmare with
some other people and she got into some barbwire and almost cut her leg off. So, when she was carrying Jet, we had to go get her in Montana. She was crippled and could barely walk. We got her sound enough so she could be comfortable in the pasture. She ended up foaling out Jet.”
Sue tells how Randy found something special in Blazin Jetolena. “Randy broke all our young ones, and he said, ‘This one is pretty nice.’ We hadn’t looked really hard at him, and he had been turned out in the pasture for two years. He said, ‘We might want to keep him a stallion.’ I said, ‘Oh, no, we’ve never had a stallion before.’ I was totally against it. ‘We don’t know what we are doing. We can’t handle a stallion.’ But we kept him a stallion. Looking back that was a good thing.
“Randy started lessons to do reining,” she continued. “He used Jet and he was awesome. Would have been an awesome working cow horse. Randy said he could
sire barrel horses and working cow horses. But we didn’t know anything about cutting, working cow horse, or reining. So, we kind of missed that venue with him, but we continued with the barrel racing as that
is what we knew. When he was four years old Randy said he was going to ride him in futurities. I said, ‘No,’ and we sent him to Ryan Lovendahl.”
When Blazin Jetolena hit the arena with Ryan Lovendahl riding, he became the 2003 Equi-Stat Leading Barrel Futurity money earner for the year with earnings of $76,208. They won seven futurities, including the Beth Cooper Memorial Futurity, AW4D Southwest Regional Futurity, Arizona Gold Futurity, High Prairie Roundup Futurity, Washington Barrel Association Futurity, XBA Futurity and American West 4D Final Futurity. They were reserve champions in two more futurities - the Super Barrel Weekend Futurity and Barrel of Gold Futurity. They were third in the average for four more, including the Speedhorse Silver Cup Futurity, and then they were fifth in the average at the Old Fort Days Futurity. He added a win in the American West Finals Maturity in 2004.
Blazin Jetolena entered the PRCA by winning several rodeos, including the Othello and Grandview rodeos in 2004. Then in 2005, they won the rodeos at Idaho Falls, Herber City, Othello, Waco, Liberty and Franklinton. With Melanie Southard riding, they ran the fastest time at the 2005 Heartland Tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This event had 1,200 horses entered with only eight of them being
in the 1D. Melanie and Blazin Jetolena qualified for the 2005 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. He ended his career with earnings of over $120,000.
When Blazin Jetolena hit the arena, he became the 2003 Equi-Stat Leading Barrel Futurity money earner for the year with earnings of $76,208.
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SPEEDHORSE