All Aboard — The Midnite Express Carries Leslie Willis to 3rd $100,000 Championship

Courtesy Barrel Racing Report | Written By Tanya Randall | Photo Springer Photography

Multiple futurity champion Leslie Willis returned to the BFA SuperStakes winner’s circle n Tuesday, November 19, aboard The Midnite Express (“Josey”) *(2019 Heritage Place Winter Mixed Sale Graduate) after a 12-year hiatus. Willis previously won the 2007 BFA SuperStakes on the Paint gelding Bet Or Check. That victory came on the heels of her first $100,000 victory at the Run For The Bucks the week prior on Hesa Dashing Boone.

“It’s been so long I was beginning to wonder if I was doing something wrong,” said Willis, who posted a 15.790 aboard Josey to win the $100,000 Championship. 

Ironically, Willis was considering skipping the BFA SuperStakes this year because she didn’t think she had a horse ready. She contacted Lisa Anderson, the manager at Copper Spring Ranch and suggested selling the slot she had shared in partnership with the Bozeman, Montana, the last handful of years.

“I told Lisa, ‘Let’s try to sell it to someone that has a colt they really think highly of and give them a chance. Mine are kind of green.’ The few people I contacted before publicly putting it out there, they either had a slot or didn’t want a slot. I called Lisa back and said well before we let it go, I’ve got a colt that’s talented but green. She was all for it,” she explained.

One of the reason Willis says her colts are behind is because she and her husband Jason, a former futurity competitor too, are in the process of moving to another place not far from their current Chester, South Carolina, home.

“It’s been overwhelming this year,” she said. “We’ve been clearing land, planting pasture. It’s got a house and barn, but it only has three stalls, which doesn’t work for me, so we’re building a barn too.”

Once she named Josey to the slot race the first of October, she made hauling him her focus. 

“Once we named him, I got really serious,” she said. “He had to go somewhere every week between now and then. The last couple of times I took him, the timers didn’t work so I didn’t know where he was clocking. I knew he was fast, but I hadn’t had a time on him in the last 30 days.”

The veteran competitor wasn’t nervous about running the green colt for big money, she actually prefers the slot race type setups to multiple runs.

“I find myself more comfortable in a one-run, give-it-your-all than riding for an average,” she admitted. “I think I over analyze stuff and think too much. I’ve always said whoever’s day it is, it’s their day. Go make the best run you can make. If it stacks up, great. If it doesn’t, they’ll be another one down the road. I didn’t get nervous the other night. I knew I had to focus on every step this horse made because he was green and he was fast and I had to keep it all between my hands.”

Willis also noted that the BFA’s setup at the Lazy E made the runs seem less overwhelming to the young horses. 

“The arena itself was more like going to a barrel race rather than going to the Oklahoma City Coliseum, where colts walk in, look up and get stage fright,” she said. “With my colt being a little more green, it helped him stay a little more focused and not get the stage fright. Everyone was sitting by the first barrel and if you got a good first barrel, they kind of screamed up across the pattern instead of making you back off and hit the second.” 

Willis and Josey’s SuperStakes run wasn’t perfect, but it was smooth and fast as the gelding kept moving forward rather than upward as some colts do when they get in bind or out of position. “I had some friends text me, ‘There’s no substitute for speed!’” Willis chuckled. “When they interviewed me right after I ran, I was like the first barrel was OK, the second was like ‘Whew’ and the third barrel…you can’t tell how badly we looped the third. I kept thinking ‘Don’t hit the second barrel on the way home!’ It went through my mind to not run on the outside of the second barrel on the way home. It wasn’t a pretty run. It was just fast.”

Bred by N.R. Stevenson, Josey is from the second performance age foal crop of AQHA Supreme Champion Fly The Red Eye out of the Jess Louisiana Blue mare Dina Blue. The gelding won on race in his three starts on the track, earning $2,408 and a high speed index of 92. Willis purchased him this past January at the Winter Mixed Sale at Heritage Place in El Reno, Oklahoma, for $6,200.

Willis had owned another Fly The Red Eye that she ended up selling to a local barrel racer, who has done really well with the gelding. The colt’s maternal side also appealed to her. Louisiana Senator, sire of her 2018 Old Fort Days Futurity Champion Ryon Rocks, is also by Jess Louisiana Blue.

“That was probably it even more because I always look at the mare side,” she said. “The Louisiana Senators just seem to have a lot of sense.”

She says that Josey was really laid back for much of his training. “He did everything we asked of him,” she said. “He didn’t require lots of riding. We’d ride him two or three days a week, take him to the jackpots, exhibition and take him back home and give him a couple of days off. He just didn’t take that riding that some of them seem to do. If you want to go long trot around the cow pasture and pony an older horse, he’s the one I take. This horse is really good minded.”

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