THE BRANDON SUN • WINTER FAIR • MARCH 2023
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Longtime Ontario barrel racer gearing up for fair competition
BY GEENA MORTFIELD
Kathy Johnston isn’t nervous. She’s al- ready gone through her usual routine in preparation for the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair barrel racing competition. She rode her horse up until the end of October last year, gave the mare a winter break for a few months, then started riding again in February. But in February she still hadn’t been any kind of organized train- ing schedule or carefully planned competition prep. Johnston spent the month loping her horse across snow-covered fields and riding down the country roads around her prop- erty in Murillo, about 25 kilometres outside of Thunder Bay. “She knows her job,” Johnston says of her mare. “It’s just a matter of keeping myself and her in shape.” Johnston is a longtime barrel rac- ing competitor at the Royal Man- itoba Winter Fair who has been coming to the fair for more than 15 years. And this year, at 63 years old, she’s coming back to compete again with a gold- en-coloured mare called Dacs Con Gold Rush, affectionately nicknamed Hustle. The Ontario cowgirl is no stranger to Manitoba either, part of that routine before the fair involves Johnston making the 10- hour drive in her one-ton dually truck and four-horse horse trailer with living quar- ters to a friend’s arena in Steinbach where she’ll do some team penning, an equestri- an sport where horses are used to separate and move cattle. Akin to cross training for athletes, Johnston said the cattle work helps keeps her horse’s mind fresh which in turn prepares her mare for running the barrel racing pattern. “I ride in there, chase some cows, go visit some friends, then I drive back home,” she said.
Kathy Johnston bought her mare, Hustle, as a four-year-old and trained her to be a competitive barrel racing horse. (Submitted)
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