Brandon Dufurrena, 25, winner of the 2011 NCHA Super Stakes Classic Non-Pro Ltd, with 225 points on Miss Ella Rey, captured yesterday’s NCHA Derby Matthews Cutting Horses Non-Pro Limited championship, with 222 points on homebred Nievas, by Cats Merada.
“All of our cows stayed in the middle of the pen and we were able to show what she does best,” said Dufurrena. “Her mama and her, both, have the same way of drawing a cow to them, so that they don’t have to go and run fast across the arena.”
Dufurenna showed Nievas’s dam, Smart Little Boogie, to win his high school rodeo finals. And the EG Southern Dancer daughter was the first horse that his father, Ed Dufurrena, trained for limited age competition.
Nievas’s name means “snowstorm” in the language of the Basque region of northern Spain, where Brandon’s great-grandmother, the original Nievas, was born, in a snowstorm.
“She’s not a superstar, but she’s a really good, smart cow horse,” said Brandon of Nievas, who was reserve champion of The Non-Pro open division under Ed Dufurrena, as well as a non-pro and non-pro limited finalist at the same event with Brandon.
Brandon shows Miss Ella Rey on Thursday, in the Classic Challenge Non-Pro finals.
Filipe Rezende Barbosa, of Brazil, was the Derby Non-Pro Ltd. reserve champion, with 216 points on Miss T Rachet, by Cat T Masterson.
Barbosa won this year’s Augusta Futurity Amateur division and was reserve champion of the Tunica Amateur, as well as Non-Pro Ltd, with Calm Cool Smooth, by Smooth As A Cat.
Youth rider Doris Lane Wood, 15, launched her career as a limited age competitor with a 215-point, third-place finish in the Derby Non-Pro Ltd. aboard Little Black Boon.
Lane’s mother, Paula Wood, showed Little Black Boon, by Duals Blue Boon, as reserve champion of the 2010 NCHA Futurity, and is slated to show her in the Derby Non-Pro division, which begins on Tuesday, July 26.
Lane’s father, five-time NCHA World champion Kobie Wood, trained Duals Blue Boon, who was shown by both Kobie and Paula to earn nearly $200,000.
Read Tuesday’s Daily Chatter here.