We recently caught up with sponsored rider and professional barrel racer Cheyenne Wimberly to chat about horses, barrel racing, and how Equinety XL works to give her horses that extra edge out on the rodeo road.
Equinety: How long have you been involved in rodeo and barrel racing, and how did you get your start?
CW: I grew up in a family that was horse oriented. My dad team roped, and my mom barrel raced. She had some nice horses and then once I started, I got all her horses. She pretty much made horses for me to ride. I was competitive at a really young age—I won my first state championship when I was 4 years old. I turned professional at age 10. Back then, they didn’t have an age limit, so I filled my permit, and I was sixteenth in the world when I was 11 years old. I really have been barrel racing my whole life.
Equinety: What is your favorite thing about barrel racing and rodeo?
CW: I have always loved trying to find the next great horse. I love the effort that the horses give you at every level, but especially when you get to the professional level. You really have to give them credit for being the best and for being elite. When you get to this level, you really see the difference in horses.
Equinety: What separates those tough 1D horses from the professional elite?
CW: Heart is what separates the pro-level horses. They’re just a different animal. The days that they don’t want to work, they still work. They are like any elite athlete—human or horse—every day they give you everything they have. Some days are better than others, but they still give you everything they have, every day.
Equinety: What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
CW: I don’t know that I ever really learned from advice. I learned from experience. I have been given a lot of advice over the years, but I don’t think the advice went as far as the learning experiences did. I might have tried the advice, but really, I just learned. I learned from experience. Barrel racing is hard for advice—everyone wants to give it but really life lessons are just the best lessons.
Equinety: What would you tell someone who thinks they want to start rodeoing professionally?
CW: First, make sure that you have a horse of that caliber. Then seek out someone who has been there and done that. And then work hard—really hard. It’s a lot of work.
Equinety: How did you get starting using Equinety products?
CW: I started when I came back to rodeoing. I had taken quite a bit of a professional break—like 20 years—so when I started back, I was tired, and I knew my horses were tired. I knew I needed something that was going to help regenerate at a cellular level to rebuild what they were using up and the damage that they were doing to their bodies. This job is hard on them—the road is hard on them and runs are hard on them. I have a friend who is a big trainer who was using it at the time and loved it. When I started researching and I looked at Equinety, there were no by-products, no fillers—just pure amino acids. I called John Dowdy and we started using it, and I love it.
Equinety: What do you like most about feeding Equinety?
CW: There are a lot of supplements on the market but there are few, if you do your research, that are like Equinety. The horses all eat it. I have never had one horse that didn’t want to eat it, even the picky eaters. At home, it’s easy to feed horses but when you get on the road, they get so picky. That’s the best thing ever about Equinety. They never sift through it, and they always want to eat it.
Equinety: In what ways have you noticed Equinety giving your horses that extra edge?
CW: They bounce back faster. I started seeing a pretty big difference within about two weeks. At that time, I knew this was going to be a part of my program. It was a missing link that my horses needed to compete at such a high level.
Equinety: What’s one thing you’d like to tell people about Equinety?
CW: Try it. Sometimes I think people worry because they get the container and it is small, but it’s one of those supplements you just have to try. There are a lot of trendy supplements, but Equinety has done a great job of keeping this product real and getting the information out there that is true.
