POMONA — With a year’s experience under her belt in Extreme Cowboy Race competition, Robin Bond returned to the Equine Affaire at the Fairplex Feb. 4-7 to see what she had learned in 12 months.

As the second-place finisher last year on Jose’s Perfection in her first Extreme Cowboy Race, Bond didn’t have high to climb. She won this year’s Extreme Cowboy Race at Equine Affaire with a cumulative score of 193 on the same horse that took her to the reserve last year, nicknamed “Chapo”.

Now the climb becomes more challenging, as the trainer at Rancho Dos Palmas Ranch in Vista eyes competing at the Calgary Stampede this summer.

“It’s a big deal,” she says of the Calgary Stampede Regional Championship July 9 in Alberta, Canada. This year’s race at the Stampede is an open event with a total purse of $14,000.
Bond fared well last November in her only other national competition, the Extreme Cowboy Race World Championships in Topeka, Kan., where she and Chapo took third in the professional division — just one point shy of the title. The 11-entry Equine Affaire event was the first race since for Bond and Chapo, a 12-year-old Quarter Horse gelding owned by Ricky Cruz.

“We took a little time off,” said Bond, who has 15 horses in training at Rancho Dos Palmas, including a half-dozen Extreme Cowboy horses. “I just took it easy on him for the whole month of December. At the beginning of January, we started to ramp up training to get ready.”

The “ramp-up” included a lot of interval training with walking and jogging – intense speed sessions followed by recovery periods. She says she also used dressage exercises for warm-up — shoulder-in, haunches-in, half-passes — getting him supple.

“I spend a lot of time doing that,” she said. “Then we get to jogging and loping, and then working some obstacles and then some rest periods in between.”

Above all else, Bond says she has learned the importance of blending speed with precision, as with lead changes.

“It’s challenging,” she says. “After learning what I learned in Kansas, I knew that I really had to pay some careful attention to being able to get my horse through it pretty darn fast, and be able to get him quiet and calm enough to do the intricate maneuvers.”

Her win earned her a saddle — her coveted first trophy saddle — but she still awaits a rematch with the horse-and-rider team that topped her last year, Cam Schryver of Ojai and Sticks, who reportedly were out of town.

“This year sure was awfully fun,” Bond says. “But it would have been nice to compete against Cam again. I’m looking forward to that match-up sometime in the future.”

She’s also looking forward to the continued growth of the Extreme Cowboy Race sport that has a growing number of sanctioned events, as well as a new association in Riverside, the California Cowboy Racers.

“Within a 400-mile radius of Pomona, there are almost 20 races throughout the year, so people are going to have a lot of opportunities to show at the novice and to get started and have a great time doing this wonderful event,” Bond says.

Finishing in second and third, respectively, behind Bond were Rick Hoffman of Hemet on Leroy and and Sally Addington of Polk, Pa., on Ghost Of A Chance.

CRAIG CAMERON’S EXTREME COWBOY RACE
Feb. 4-6, 2010
2010 Equine Affaire / Fairplex, Pomona, CA
PLACE RIDER HORSE’S NAME BREED HOMETOWN SCORE TIME
1 Robin Bond Jose’s Perfection QH Vista, CA 195 05:49.9
2 Rick Hoffman Leroy QH Hemet, CA 183 06:04.0
3 Sally Addington Ghost of a Chance Grade Polk, PA 181 05:46.5
4 Wylene Wilson Filthy Rich Mustang Queen Creek, AZ 175 04:32.0
5 Bill Cameron I’ll Cowboy Up QH Tehachapi, CA 173 05:06.3
6 John Reuter Colt Forty Five Arabian Murrieta, CA 170 05:21.7
7 Greg Robinson Lil Dosa Peppy QH Lakeside, CA 169.5 05:48.2
8 Megan Bittle RT Reveontae Ar/Mor/QH Coarsegold, CA 168 05:06.1
9 John Varian Fizz QH Parkfield, CA 158.5 05:11.8
10 Corinne Lindquist The Master Cure QH Perris, CA 158 06:10.8
11 Wylene Wilson Black Widow Grade Queen Creek, AZ 151

To learn more about the California Cowboy Racers, based in Riverside, visit the Web site:
http://www.cacowboyracers.com

To learn more about the Calgary Stampede, visit the Web site:
http://www.calgarystampede.com