Shattering Glass Ceilings
A packed coliseum cheered on riders in Western performance horse’s four-event challenge: The World’s Greatest Horseman. From a pool of 80 rider in the prelims, 15 made it to the finals held on March 1, 2025, at Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas. At the conclusion of this monumental event, Erin Taormino was crowned champion — the first woman in history to win the World’s Greatest Horseman title. With a composite score of 884.5 — a full 4.5 points higher than the reserve score, Taormino won the title with Linda Mars’ great stallion Hazardouz Material, and took home $150,000.
Taormino is no stranger to the World’s Greatest Horseman competition, and neither is “Skeeter,” the 2016 stallion sired by Metallic Cat, out of Scooters Daisy Dukes, by Dual Smart Rey and bred by Taylor Carbo of Stephenville, Texas. Taormino, of Dennis, Texas. Mars, of Jackson, Wyoming, has owned him since 2018, and Taormino has ridden the stallion since his three-year-old year.
“I showed him here last year, and made the finals on him, and he’s just an amazing athlete, and he feels incredible,” Taormino said. “He’s happy, he’s sound, he deserved this, and he wanted this.”
With so many events: herd work, steer stopping, rein work and fence work, this competition is a unique challenge. Taormino was ready for it, and her strategy was simple.
“I just wanted to take each event as it came, and my whole goal was to be clean through it all and just see what happened; do my job, and let him do his, and stay clean.”
During the prelim competition, the pair did well enough to make a three-way tie for 13th place — landing the last slot in the finals. But with a clean-slate format for the final events, they were set up to win it.
In the herd work, Taormino had first draw, which she says made her nervous but it didn’t rattle her — the pair scored a 219.
Skeeter demonstrated his stops in the rein work.
“I don’t like being first out, but we just went in there with the game plan to cut clean in the middle of the pen, and he was really good,” Taormino said.
In steer stopping, she aimed to catch, and catch she did — they scored a 221.5 — second place in the event.
Hoping for clean rein work, Taormino was pleased with their performance and score of 223.5, second behind Todd Crawford and One Time Legend.
“I felt like I probably could have gotten him turned a little better, but he did his job, and I was elated with him,” Taormino said.
Going into the cow work, Taormino listened to the advice of good friends.
“They told me just to work what they kicked in, no more, and no less,” Taormino said. “That’s exactly what happened, and that’s exactly what we did. When all was said and done, he was amazing.”
Their cow work score of 220.5 — third in the event — further solidified their lead, and they just couldn’t be caught — their final composite score of 884.5 stayed on top.
“It’s amazing, it’s pretty surreal. I don’t know that it’s completely sunk in yet, but it feels incredible,” Taormino said. “I knew I had the horse that could do it if I did my job and stayed out of his way. I’m so happy for Skeeter and for Miss Linda Mars. I’m the most happy for them.”
Taormino just hit $1 Million Rider status in 2024 — the second woman in NRCHA with this honor.
She credits her team, family, friends and community for their support to help make this win happen.
“We can’t ever do this alone,” Taormino said. “My husband is incredible. I have two of the best girls that work for me — they take care of everything, they’re amazing. My friends that are horse trainers, the support we have for each other, you can’t do it without them. You have to have a team, and I absolutely have the best team.”
Todd Crawford’s reserve champion title with One Time Legend earned $75,000, which pushed Crawford into $3 Million Dollar Rider status. The 2015 gelding (One Time Pepto x HR Playin Legend x Little Lenas Legend) was bred by Cowan Select Horses LLC and is owned by Larry Hall Cutting Horses LLC. Crawford is from Blanchard, Oklahoma.
Crawford and One Time Legend were the reserve World’s Greatest Horseman winners.