As 2020 winds to a close, Postmedia’s Wes Gilbertson profiles Calgary’s sporting icons of the 2000s…..
Martha, in case you’re wondering, is still calling the shots in retirement.
After carrying Calgary-area cowgirl Lindsay Sears to a pair of world barrel-racing titles, one in record-smashing fashion, the legendary mare has earned a lifetime of special treatment.
“There are no rules in Martha’s world, other than her own,” Sears said, chuckling. “I mean, she was always spoiled. We’ve always laughed because it has always been Martha’s way or the highway. I don’t let any other horse lead me around, and she leads you everywhere we go. She is always going to be five steps ahead of you and that’s just the way it is, and you love her for it now. With any other horse, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re supposed to be walking behind me.’
“But she walks all over you, in front of you, and you think it’s the greatest thing on Earth.”
Martha might be one-of-a-kind.
What’s more, this was a terrific tandem, a marvellous match.
With Sears in the saddle and Martha — full name, Sugar Moon Express — speeding around the cloverleaf pattern, they were for a spell the quickest combo in the barrel-racing biz.
Their dominance was on full display in 2008.
They won the $100,000 round — and with it, a hefty bronze — at the Calgary Stampede, the backyard biggie for the pride of nearby Nanton. (Her family has been farming/ranching in that area for 100-plus years.)
They won the gold buckle at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, a historic result since no Canadian had ever been crowned the world barrel-racing champion.
Along the way, they collected the top cheque at many of the major stops on the circuit and shattered the single-season earnings record. If they had counted the loot Sears pocketed at the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, that mark would still stand today.
“I’d probably dreamed about winning the Calgary Stampede,” Sears said. “I don’t know that as a kid, I ever thought to myself, ‘I’m going to be a world-champion barrel racer.’ ”
She was. Twice.
Whether it’s in the dust at Stampede Park or on the manicured lawns at Spruce Meadows, Calgary’s sports fans have long been treated to superb performances by horse-and-rider combinations.
Eric Lamaze and Hickstead formed a dynamic duo in show-jumping circles. Lamaze is the all-time money-leader at Spruce Meadows, and Hickstead was so iconic that there is now a life-sized statue of the horse at the world-renowned venue.
Kurt Bensmiller is the current cowboy-to-catch in the chuckwagon-racing game, a four-time winner of the Rangeland Derby’s dash-for-cash over a six-year span. Hitchcock was hooked as his right leader for each of those victories.
Sears, who at 39 is now splitting her time between Nanton and Ropesville, Texas, is one of several locals who’ve raised roars at the Stampede rodeo. Like the others, she’ll downplay her own role, insisting the spotlight should be on her four-legged co-star.
“Especially when you ride a horse like Martha, I used to think to myself, ‘As long as you don’t mess up, you’re going to win something,’ ” Sears said. “That was, I think, the hardest part about competing on that horse was the pressure that you’d put on yourself because it really was entirely on you not to mess up. You knew she was going to do her job. So as long as you didn’t mess up, things were gonna go good.
“Now, I pet her all the time and I’m like, ‘You have no idea how special you are.’ I do. It’s unexplainable how special that horse was for the sport of barrel racing, to me, in general. She’s just a unicorn, really and truly. In her day, she was a unicorn.”
Give this cowgirl some credit, too.
Horses, even the best ones, don’t come with an auto-pilot setting. Chemistry isn’t a sure thing.
“There’d be people who would say, ‘I’ll tell you, if that was my mare, I’d sure as heck make her run different around those barrels,’ ” said Sears’ longtime veterinarian and friend Warren Weber. “Because Martha always had her head kinked to the right. And everybody would say, ‘How can she see barrels running that way?’ Well, I’ll tell you what, Lindsay had the brains to let that mare do her thing.
“Yeah, she had her head kinked to the right, but I always used to say that she was watching Lindsay with her right eye, watching to see if she was happy. Because that mare would run through a wall for that girl.”
Susan Sears remembers the call from her daughter, remembers the trip to Texas for a first look at this sorrel mare that she was scouting.
“Her dad (Rick) and I, our philosophy was if you want to do something, we’ll support you, but you have to give it 110%,” said Susan, who travelled extensively with Lindsay on the pro rodeo trail. “Doesn’t matter what you choose to do, that was the rule.
“So we looked at Martha and, yep, we agreed that was maybe the horse she needed. And I said, ‘OK, if you do this and you’re going to go out on the road, this has to be a job. This is your entire focus.’ And she did that, and that’s hard to do. There is no room for social life, really. You’re on the road all the time, with horses. When you’re not on the road, that little time off you have, you’re at home tuning up your horses. So she devoted her entire focus to doing it.
“I think that’s what made her tough. She’s mentally tough, and that’s what it takes in any sport, whether you’re a barrel racer or a hockey player or anything.”
Sears’ singular focus, her determination to win a world title, led her to skip the Canadian Finals Rodeo in 2008, a decision that rankled some back home. She instead cashed another first-place cheque in Dallas, a deposit that helped to pad her perch atop the standings as the NFR approached. She and Martha continued to clean up at the Super Bowl of Rodeo, clocking the fastest time in five of 10 go-rounds in Las Vegas.
This powerhouse pair won another world championship in 2011, with Martha recovering from injury — a tip of the cowboy hat goes to her second horse, Moe, who helped her qualify — in time for the season-end spectacle.
All told, Sears earned seven straight invites to the NFR from 2006-12. Weber was there for each of them.
“I don’t think I ever saw her turn down a young girl for an autograph at the end of one of those signing sessions,” Weber recalled. “They’d be lined up for a city block to get an autograph from Lindsay Sears, and she never missed a one.
“After she won her first worlds, we had an open house at our clinic in June of 2009, when she was up here. We advertised it, and everybody knew she was the world champ and she was bringing Martha to the clinic. I don’t know if anybody still has pictures of the lineup of vehicles, of families, moms and daughters who wanted to see Lindsay and Martha. Again, she never missed an autograph that day.
“I had told people about Martha — she’s like a pet dog. A lot of horses aren’t, but the only thing Martha liked more than people around her was people touching her. It was incredible. Horses get fidgety and tired, but not Martha. She was there until the last photo op.”
Rest assured, Martha is still getting plenty of attention in a happy, healthy retirement.
Lindsay, though, might not be around quite as much. She has barely rodeoed for the past seven years, but a new horse — a stallion that goes by SME One Of A Kind — has her itching to hit the barrel-racing circuit again.
“It’s exciting for me — 2021 will be the first year that I have one of Martha’s babies that I’m going to compete on,” she said. “My mom and I have had a passion for horses and breeding horses and so to finally come full circle, it’s exciting for me.”
Mom, too, can hardly wait.
“If that horse can do even half as much as Martha did, I’ll feel like we’ve succeeded in our breeding program,” Susan said. “He has a lot of talent. Whether he can put it all together … We’ll see. But he has some ability, so I’m really looking forward to next year.”
LINDSAY SEARS
Remember me for …
Aboard her star horse Martha, Sears made history at the 2008 National Finals Rodeo as the first Canadian to win the world barrel-racing title. She repeated that feat in 2011.
Oh and another thing …
During that same dream season of 2008, Sears collected a $100,000 payday as the Calgary Stampede champion.
Staggering stat …
US$323,570 — That’s how much Sears earned on the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) circuit in 2008, a single-season record that didn’t even include her winnings in Calgary.
These days …
Sears oversees the manufacturing side of the family-run business — 2W Livestock Equipment. She’s planning to rodeo more often in 2021.
She said it …
“Martha’s statistics (in 2008), I think she went to 33 rodeos and won a first- to third-place cheque at 31. It was just one of those years where she stayed sound, we drew upon the right days when it was dry, all of those things. You couldn’t have laid the deck of cards any better.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
