Athleticism, agility and speed were on display as Peel Valley Cutting Club’s major Armidale competition played out on the four-day long weekend.
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The Cuttin’ for Cash event saw riders and horses sliding, ducking and weaving to compete for the $40,000 in prizemoney on offer.
The tournament was hailed a success with a big turn out taking part in the action.
"Quite often we have these shows and being Easter that is when our weather starts to get quite cold and we get people coming from Queensland and freezing their butts off so it was really good we had beautiful weather for them,” club secretary-treasure Nadean McKenna said.
"It went really, really well.
"Our biggest struggle was cattle, if we had more cattle we could have taken more entries.
“It is just seasonal stuff, when people are weaning and stuff like that we just struggle for cattle.
"The cattle we had though were actually fantastic and they were really good cattle.
"They all worked really well.”
The event commenced on Thursday with the young horses trying their hand at the sport before the Sunkissed Quarter Horses and EB Phalaris Open Derby kicked into gear.
Eight horse and rider combinations qualified for the Open Derby final on Friday night with Grant Quigley and Driving Miss Cherry claiming the win.
Dean Holden riding Peptos Beau Jay was crowned the Open champion, Nic Jones on Sweet Smokin Hootch won the Rookies, Matt Oakley riding Highway to Hell and Link Baumann riding Docs Linkalena were joint champions of the $15,000 Novice, Kev Marsden and Playin Moore secured the Q Stud $15,000 Non Pro, Rob McKenna and Parreweena Pink Fireball were the best of the Regional Australia Bank/ PVCC Novice Non Pros, the Betts Transport $7,500 Non Pro was Darrien Cox riding My Kinda Playgirl, the Snaffle Bit was won by Steve Howard and Seligman Oak while Bree Smith on Sweet Smokin Hootch and Jasmine Shumack riding Eyebrows Cat were the junior and senior Ariat youth champions.