07/11/2026
She paid $400 for a horse everyone else had written off as an outlaw. He ended Charmayne James' 10 year dynasty and became the greatest barrel horse of his generation.
Born October 10 1955 in Dayton Ohio, Kristie Peterson grew up on a ranch near Parker Colorado where horses were everywhere and competition was simply what you did. She worked as a captain at her local sheriff's department overseeing the jail and dispatchers when she decided in 1989 to try her hand at professional rodeo. She needed a horse. A friend pointed her toward a broncy two year old stud c**t that nobody wanted — considered partially blind in one eye, so difficult to handle that he had been relegated to feedlot work before being traded for three months of training on another horse. He was eventually sold to Kristie for four hundred dollars.
She called him Bozo. Nobody was laughing for long.
After gelding him and training him on the barrel pattern from scratch Bozo showed a natural talent so extraordinary that Kristie said he simply took to it from the very first day. By his three year old year he was running open times. By 1992 he won the Barrel Futurities of America World Championship Derby and Sweepstakes. By 1993 Kristie and Bozo walked into the Thomas and Mack Center at the NFR ranked fourth in the world — where Charmayne James and Scamper were chasing an unprecedented tenth consecutive World Championship. Kristie nearly stopped it. A tipped barrel in round nine was all that kept her from history that year.
She came back in 1994 and finished it. First World Championship. The streak of ten consecutive Charmayne James titles — the most dominant run in the history of women's professional sports — was over. Ended by a Colorado cowgirl and a four hundred dollar horse that everyone else had thrown away.
Four World Championships — 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998. Five consecutive NFR average titles — something nobody in the forty year history of the championship rodeo had ever done before. Twenty two consecutive NFR rounds placing in the money — an unmatched feat at the time. In 1998 she set a new WPRA single season earnings record of over $212,000 — nearly $100,000 of that coming from the NFR alone. At the 100th celebration of Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1996 she set the arena barrel racing record of 17.03 seconds in rain, hail and a tornado warning. The weather didn't stop Bozo. Nothing did.
In eighty trips around the barrels at the Thomas and Mack Center across eight consecutive NFRs — Kristie and Bozo knocked over exactly two barrels total. Two. Across eighty runs. She said herself — "I haven't hit a barrel since the second round in 1993. I've been shaking my head for seven years. It's just amazing."
Bozo was named AQHA Horse of the Year five consecutive times from 1995 through 1999. Horse with the Most Heart four straight years. He won Rodeo Houston three times. He retired in 2003 at the Houston rodeo — going out exactly the way a champion should. Kristie's youngest daughter Jordan later rode him at junior competitions. After his pro career closed she let Jordan go in the alley on him for the first time. Jordan said — "Mom let him go!" He never forgot what he was born to do.
Both Kristie Peterson and Bozo were inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame together in 2018. Their daughter Jordon Briggs went on to win the WPRA World Championship in barrel racing in 2021 — another generation carrying the family legacy forward.
Over $1.3 million in career earnings together. Four World Championships. Five NFR average titles. A mother whose daughter became World Champion. And a four hundred dollar horse who ended the greatest dynasty in women's rodeo history.
That was Kristie Peterson and Bozo. 🐴🎀🏆
