How a 63-year-old cowgirl became the No. 1 barrel racer in Canada and she's not done yet

Lynette Brodoway cuts a poised silhouette, standing outside her barn on a warm, autumn morning near Brooks, Alta.

One hand is in her jeans pocket, the other holds on to a 1,400-pound,sorrel-coloured gelding alert by her side. A blue cowboy hat so dark it's almost black carves away the sky from around her tanned face.

"I've been looking for horses like this all my life," she said, pausing to consider her cherished horse named Cowboy.

"I guess I got old waiting."

It was a wait that turned out to be worth it, for both of them.

Last year, at the age of 62, Brodoway won the Ladies Barrel Racing Championship at the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR), competing largely against cowgirls half her age.

This week, she's heading to the same rodeo in Edmonton the biggest on the Canadian stage as the season leader after entering the pro rodeo circuit just eight years ago.

And the horse she'll be competing on is the same mount that raced her to the finish line last year; voted to have the "most heart" that season by Brodoway's fellow competitors.

His papered name is Boots on Fire, but to Brodoway, he's called Cowboy.

When Brodoway leads him around her barn, she does so with the confidence of a person who's spent thousands of hours in the saddle over her lifetime.

"I believe that Cowboy is a gift given to me by God," she said.

"He's the kinda horse that when he turns down that alley, he runs hard and he turns hard. That takes a special horse."

A rare breed

In barrel racing terms, the alley is the chute riders enter before they start their run around three barrels, completing a clover pattern. Rounding the turn of the last barrel, horse and rider reach a full-out gallop before crossing the finish line.

The event is timed and seconds are added for each barrel knocked over.

A whole suite of traits make a horse able to excel at barrel racing, but for Brodoway, it comes down to two things: personality and athleticism.

Cowboy enjoys competition, something she can tell by how well he performs under pressure, and his attitude before a race. He's alert and slightly antsy in the alley, ready to go.

WATCH | A slice oflife forLynette Brodoway and her horse Cowboy:

How a 63-year old cowgirl became the No. 1 barrel racer in Canada and she's not done yet

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Lynette Brodoway has wanted to barrel race for as long as she can remember, and has been on the back of a horse since she was four years old. Last year, at the age of 62, Brodoway won the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR) Ladies Barrel Racing Championship, competing largely against cowgirls half her age. CBC Calgary's Kylee Pedersen met Brodoway at her acreage to hear what it's taken to achieve her success and how she balances racing with her commitment to her family.

As for his athletic ability, Brodoway attributes that to a breeding formula she stumbled upon nearly two decades ago, when she was asked to train Cowboy's sire, Root Beers Boots, on barrels.

Root Beers Boots, who is owned by Sandy Ridge Stallion Station in Bassano, Alta., is a quarter horse specialized in cutting, or what's also called a cow horse animals known for their agility and strength.

"When I got working with that stallion, I could tell that he was an athlete," said Brodoway.

"I asked [Sandy Ridge] to breed him to the fastest running bred [quarter] horse they had on the place."

As part racehorse, part cutting horse, Cowboy is smooth or "handy"around the barrels, and quick in between.

The way he races suits her, says Brodoway, completing a final piece of the puzzle. A horse's raw ability alone won't win titles they also have to meld with their rider's style, like a matching set of fingerprints.

To balance out Cowboy's energy, Brodoway says she always tries to "ride quiet" during a race. Meaning, she stays centred and controlled, but largely stays out of Cowboy's way.

"I don't want to be moving around up there because it distracts the horse. You see what I'm saying?I will kick in between my turns and on the way home, [but] I don't wear spurs on him and I don't whip him."

"When I go into the arena, I would like to think that on a good run, it's 90 per cent him, 10 per cent me."

Dreams delayed

Finding out what it was that she needed in a horse is just one part of what led Brodoway to career success later in life.

Born in Brooks into a family of team ropers, Brodoway spent most of her childhood traveling to rodeos. She says that from as early as she can remember, she wanted to barrel race.

"The allure of the girls, and the pretty outfits and the fast horses and there's just something about barrel racing that I honestly can't explain. It's art to me."

While roping took precedence, nothing could keep Brodoway off the back of a horse, says her brother Dwight Wigemyr, who won the CFR championship in team roping in 2002 and 2008.

He remembers that during the winter, they'd hook up a toboggan to the back of a horse, and Brodoway would tow them around.

"With Lynette, if it had to do with the horse, she wanted it. She's spent her whole life on the back of the horse."

She finally began training horses on barrels in her late 20s, and continued to compete at an amateur level after she started a family with her husband, Ken.

Brodoway says that at that point, even though she had some good horses, she made an intentional decision to put her dream of going pro on hold once more, in order to be home to raise her two sons.

The family suffered a tragedy on Oct. 11, 2001, when eldest son Wacey, 16, was killed in a car accident only a few kilometres from home.

Brodoway says that loss continues to give her a different perspective on how she has chosen to live her life.

"Even with what I'm accomplishing now, I know that I'm first a wife, a mom, a mother-in-law and a grandma," she said.

Wigemyr's wife, Becky, says that while Brodoway watched other family members, including her brother, achieve rodeo success earlier on, it never got her down.

"That's something about [being a] woman in general is that, yes, she's doing this later in her life because she couldn't do it all, you can't do it all when you're raising a family."

"So this is what I think is so great.Now she's doing what she's always dreamed of."

A long day's work

Brodoway says she hopes her story inspires people to never give up on their passions. But she also stresses that achieving what she has has also taken a lot of hard work.

"You don't get to sit on the couch and say, yeah, my dream's going to come to pass. You got to get in the boat."

When she's not on the rodeo trail, Brodoway starts each day in her barn at 9 a.m., exercising her horses Cowboy andtwo other prospect horses she's currently training.

"It takes a long time to get them horses rodeo ready," she said.

At noon, she takes a lunch break, then carries on with equine therapy and other appointments for Cowboy in the afternoon, before finally doing chores and getting washed up for supper.

"I don't know that all people understand how well [the horses] are cared for," said Brodoway.

"I had to learn how to take care of the equine athlete. Their value when they get to this level, I wouldn't even want to know what [Cowboy's] value is. But you have to treat them like a professional."

As a former barrel racer herself, Becky Wigemyrsays Brodoway chooses to do some things differently from the rest of her competitors.

For example, many cowgirls will have at least two mounts to get them through the year: one for the indoor tracks and one for outdoors, one that they'll run on the smaller patterns and one that they'll save for the bigger ones.

But Wigemyr says her sister-in-law only has Cowboy. For that reason, after last year's success, she chose to give him a bit of a break this season, and not enter him inas many rodeos.

"There were a few times this year where I heard sort of buzz from other rodeo fans [who] said, you know, 'why wouldn't she have entered that rodeo?' And she didn't because she didn't want to put too many runs on Cowboy. Ultimately, we see that there's a method to her madness because she ended up where she ended up."

"The thing about Lynette that sets her apart from a lot of other people is the fact that the horse comes first. If I believed in the next life, I would want to come back as one of Lynette Broadway's horses."

A horsewoman honing her craft

Brodoway says she sees herself as a horsewoman first, and a barrel racer second. Before her professional career took off, her main focus was offering horsemanship training clinics.

Her respect for horses was something instilled in her early on by her father, she says, while watching him rehabilitate animals that had fallen into the wrong hands.

"My dad, he definitely has something very special with the horse. Dad had a way of winning those horses over."

"I've been raised in that culture where the horse is one that you can have a relationship with. And so I try to understand [Cowboy], let him have a say in things. I try to see things from his point of view. And honestly, that only comes, in my opinion, from spending a lot of time with them."

Brodoway says she's heading into this year's CFR with a different attitude than she has before.

Dwight, her brother, says she's a very competitive person, something Brodoway agrees with.

"I can get caught up in the process and I can put a lot of stress on myself.

"[This year] I'm going to focus on enjoying the runs. I'm going to enjoy my girls that are competing against me, and what will be will be."

The CFR runs Oct. 2-5 at Rogers Place in Edmonton.