Eleuterio Arcese

First of all, it’s important to note these statistics are based on earnings recorded by Equi-Stat, a division of Cowboy Publishing Group, in the past 10 years (1999-2008). This money includes checks won at shows, open incentives and sire/dam enrollment programs.

Money attributed to a horse is the amount of money that particular horse won and is no way related to who actually received the money. Also, monies attributed to riders are not the earnings of the rider, but rather monies awarded to all horses that rider rode from 1999 through 2008. It’s also important to note that for the leading multi-discipline owners, the earnings for each listed horse is the money earned while that particular horse belonged to that owner.

It was a little tricky to establish parameters for determining the multi-discipline leaders because of the varying payouts in the three separate disciplines. Cutting pays more than reining and reined cow horse; therefore, horses, riders, sires, breeders and owners who posted high cutting earnings were at the top of almost every list – with many of them posting very little money in reining and/or cow horse. Therefore, we established minimum amounts in each category to ensure the leaders were individuals who posted reasonable success in two or more disciplines.

The earnings minimums sometimes vary within the categories. For instance, the rider earning requirements are: $10,000 for cutting/reining; $25,000 for cutting/cow horse; $50,000 for reining/cow horse; and $5,000 for each discipline in the chart with all three disciplines. The primary objective for this statistical section was to name the representative leaders in each chart, and so the earnings minimums had to be adjusted accordingly. Only a handful of riders have competed successfully in all three disciplines, while many have crossed over with big earnings in reining and cow horse. Also, very few horses have been shown successfully in all three events, so that leading horses chart is limited.

Lastly, the charts vary in length. This is because the process started with pulling the top 100 individuals in each category (reining/cutting, cutting/cow horse, cow horse/reining, and reining/cutting/cow horse). Then, the earnings minimums were established and the names sifted. Sometimes there were several, such as in the sires in cutting/cow horse, and other times there were very few, such as with horses that had shown in all three disciplines. This is interesting because it shows the frequency – or the lack of frequency – in the crossover.

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