Pro Rodeo: Travis Tryan's great horse Walt honored

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Four world champion cowboys and the prized horse of Billings team roper Travis Tryan will be inducted soon into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

World champion cowboys Tom Nesmith, Mark Garrett, Bob Wegner and Harry Charters, along with rodeo notable Jack Hannum and the Hendricks Brothers specialty act, will be inducted in ceremonies planned Aug. 8.

Tryan's great horse Precious Speck (Walt), a four-time team roping head horse of the year, will also be inducted. Walt was voted the AQHA/PRCA Team Roping Heading Horse of the Year from 2007-09 and four times overall (also in 2003). He was also third in the balloting twice.

"This is like a family member going into the Hall of Fame," Tryan said. "When you have a horse for 10 years, and he's a huge part of your career, to see him go into the Hall is one of the coolest things that can happen."

Tryan once called Walt "the greatest horse that has ever lived." He rode Walt nine times at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (2001-09). His brother, Clay (a three-time world champion), rode Walt at the 2001 WNFR, as did 21-time World Champion Trevor Brazile in 2005.

"When I got Walt, I was 19 years old, and when I first rodeoed on him I was 20 and made the Finals," Travis Tryan said. "We kind of started our careers at the same time, and I learned a lot from him. He was so good that all I had to do was go out and rope, and he took care of the rest."

While riding Walt at the 2008 WNFR, Travis Tryan and his partner, Cory Petska, tied the then-world record time of 3.5 seconds in the eighth round.

The horse died April 24, 2010, of an aneurysm while warming up for morning slack at the Clovis (Calif.) Rodeo. He was 20.

Nesmith, of Bethel, Okla., was a soft-spoken cowboy whose best events were steer wrestling and calf roping, and he captured the 1962 all-around and steer wrestling world championships. He died of a heart attack on Oct. 16, 1972, at the age of 37. In the years leading up to his death, Nesmith battled a rare form of heart disease, and there was no cure at the time.

Garrett, 49, the 1996 world champion bareback rider, was known for his ability to come through under pressure. The South Dakota cowboy won his only gold buckle with a clutch ride in Round 10 at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, scoring 83 points on Big Bend Rodeo Company's Spring Fling, a 2014 inductee into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

That ride also clinched the NFR average title for Garrett with a then-bareback riding record of 786 points on 10 head. He also set the NFR bareback riding earnings record that year with $78,517. He had entered the 1996 NFR about $30,000 behind his older brother, Marvin, who was the bareback riding leader.

Mark Garrett joins his brother in the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. Marvin Garrett, who won four gold buckles (1988-89, 1994-95), was enshrined in 1998.

Mark Garrett qualified for the NFR nine times (1989-91, 1994-97, 1999-2000).

Over an 11-year span from 1956-1966, Wegner finished among the top five bull riders in the world standings 10 times, earning a world championship in 1964 and four reserve world championships (1958-59, 1961, 1966). He twice won the NFR average (1964, 1966).

Wegner died March 30, 2014. He was 80.

Although Charters did not buy his RCA permit until 1958, at the relatively advanced age of 33, he managed to compete at an elite level for a decade. He won his only world championship as a rookie steer wrestler in 1959 and went on to put nine NFR qualifications on his career résumé — six in bulldogging and three in tie-down roping.

Charters died of cancer on July 7, 1981, at the age of 56.

Hannum was a five-time qualifier for the National Finals Rodeo and a longtime administrator with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

He made his big breakthrough in his first year of full-time competition when he won the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days all-around title in 1977 on his way to qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo as a tie-down roper.

Hannum made it to the NFR four more times as a steer wrestler (1978-80, 1983), enjoying his best season in 1979 when he finished third in the world behind Stan Williamson and ProRodeo Hall of Famer Byron Walker.

Both of Hannum's sons, Olin and Jake, have qualified for the Wrangler NFR. Olin, 37, went to the WNFR in 2011 as a steer wrestler, and Jake, 34, qualified in 2007 as a tie-down roper.

Hannum died Sept. 16, 2014, in an Ogden, Utah, hospital of organ failure at the age of 70.