Event in which you compete: Tie-Down Roping

Hometown: Childress, TX, USA

Number of years riding: 16 years professionally

Career accomplishments to date: 

 

How you got started in your event: My Father was the first calf roper to get off of his horse on the right. He was an NFR Qualifier in the 1960’s.

Favorite Ariat product: Full Quill Ostrich Square Toe Boots

Proudest career moment: Winning the World Championship in 2008 after years of trials and tribulations, including a stroke and experimental heart surgery at 32 years old.

Tell us about your first horse: Jim Dandy was a mean little black Shetland that taught all of the Smith kids how to ride. He would bite, kick, run away, and rub you off on the fence.

You ride because: Some of my best friends have been horses.

If you weren’t a professional rider, you would be a: Rancher striving to be the very best in that career.

Favorite mentor or idol growing up: My Dad, Clifton Smith, was my mentor and idol. Dad didn’t tell me how to live, he showed me.

Favorite place to travel: Calgary Stampede

Name one fun fact that people don’t know about you:I love to design houses and barns in my head. I should have been an architect.

Favorite way to unwind outside the barn: Spending time and playing with my two boys, Stone and Scout.

Good luck charm: I don’t believe in good luck charms. In fact, if I think something is supposed to be bad luck I will do it or wear it just to prove differently. I had a couple of fifty-dollar bills in my wallet when I won the World Championship in 2008, and I was wearing a yellow shirt when I broke the World record at the Texas Stampede in 1997.