Glen Innes Showground will be alive again this weekend with the Northern Rivers Cutting Horse Club conducting its round of the National Cutting Horse Association’s Australian championships.
Competition starts on Friday and continues over the weekend.
Former National Champions, local achievers and novices will put their valuable steeds to the test in a specially prepared arena – several well-known local family names will be easily recognised, some well-placed to take out awards in the national championships.
In Australia, nearly $2,000,000 worth of prize money is paid-out across some one hundred and seventy NCHA affiliated shows every year.
More than $700,000 is paid-out at the NCHA Futurity alone each June, the richest indoor performance horse event in the southern hemisphere.
Cutting horses are treated as athletes, while their riders are rated as professional sports people.
Top cutters train on a daily basis, working their horses at incredible facilities while caring for them with the utmost respect and confidence.
When so much time and money is invested into an animal’s breeding and its nurturing and training programme, the importance of horse care and the serious nature of competition is at an all-time high, making cutting the most prestigious equine discipline world-over.
In a cutting contest, horse and rider have two and a half minutes to work two or three beasts and keep them from returning to the herd.
The herd, a body of cattle situated at the working end of the arena, is entered by the contestant and one beast is in-turn separated and moved to the front of the herd at the contestant’s discretion.
Once split from the other cattle the selected beast is worked by the horse, it’s rider setting his or her hand on the horse’s neck and only using his or her feet to assist the horse in its job; this is where more than two years of training comes into the equation.
