Once a year, the natural horsemanship world gathers to watch a handful of horsemen do something quietly extraordinary: take a completely unstarted young horse and, over a few days in front of thousands of spectators, bring it to a soft, willing first ride. Road to the Horse, billed as the world championship of colt starting, is the closest thing our corner of the horse world has to a marquee event. The last two runnings gave followers of the vaquero tradition plenty to talk about.
What Road to the Horse Is
The format is deceptively simple and genuinely demanding. Competitors are matched with young, unhandled horses, drawn from a ranch remuda, and given limited time across several sessions to start them from the ground up, finishing with a ridden obstacle course. There is no forcing a horse through this in front of a crowd. What works is what has always worked in this tradition: reading the horse, offering a good deal, releasing at the right moment, and building trust faster than fear. The event has become a showcase for feel-based colt starting and a proving ground for the methods handed down from Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt.
2025: Tik Maynard Goes Back-to-Back
Road to the Horse 2025 ran in late March at the Kentucky Horse Park, and Canada's Tik Maynard won the world championship for the second year in a row, a rare back-to-back title. Maynard, known for a thoughtful, curiosity-driven approach to young horses, edged one of the closest finishes in the event's history, with the championship competitors separated by a narrow margin. He also received the Jack Brainard Horsemanship Award, named for the late horseman and given for the quality of the work, not just the score. Among those chasing him was Buster McLaury, a direct student of Ray Hunt, who took reserve champion honors, a reminder of how directly the lineage still runs through this arena.
2026: Nick Dowers Makes It Three
The 2026 event, themed Legends in the Making, ran in mid-March at the same venue, and Nevada horseman Nick Dowers won his third career championship in another near-tie finish, with the field separated by a slim margin. Dowers, whose background runs through ranch work and the reined cow horse world, started a Pitchfork Ranch filly to the title and, like Maynard the year before, earned the Jack Brainard Horsemanship Award. The event carried a six-figure purse and a medieval-themed obstacle finale, but the substance was the same as ever: quiet, correct starts under pressure.
A Family Thread and the Vaquero Line
One of the best storylines of 2026 was a generational one. Tiffany McLaury, daughter of 2025 reserve champion Buster McLaury, won the Wild Card Challenge to earn her place in the championship round, following her father into the same arena. That kind of family continuity is not incidental to this tradition; it is how it survives. The knowledge passes down through people who ride together, and watching a second-generation McLaury in the pen is watching the lineage do what it has always done. Organizers have already set the next event for March 2027 at the same venue.
Why It Matters to How We Teach
We are not colt-starting in front of arena crowds, and most of our students will never start a young horse at all. So why watch? Because Road to the Horse distills, in a few days, the same principles we work on every lesson: that pressure and release, timing, and reading the horse beat force every time; that a horse offered a fair deal will meet you; and that the best work looks calm because the horse is calm. When a competitor takes an unstarted colt to a soft first ride without a fight, that is not a trick. It is the tradition we come from, performed at its highest level, and it is worth studying no matter what you ride.