It’s a pretty good day when you can pick up a slick $20,640 cowboy style. Lynn Proctor, Boise, Idaho, and Dick Churchill, Queen Creek, Arizona, did just that when they won the National 10.5 Finale at the NTR National Finals VI with a time of 36.11 on four head.

Churchill isn’t new to the NTR champion’s stage. In 2019 he won the National 11.5 Finale heading for the talented youngster, Michael Calmelat. What’s cooler, the retired travelling alarm salesman was riding Brad To The Bone—the AQHA gelding that La Cygne, Kansas, horse trainer, Brad Lund, sold at The Horse Sale at Rancho Rio for a record-setting $79,000 in 2018—to this year’s 10.5 champion heeling title. Dale Little Soldier, Mandan, North Dakota, purchased the now 7-year-old through the sale and still owns him.

“I ride all of Dale’s horses,” Churchill, who also takes in a good number of additional outside horses, said. “We call him “Bad” but he’s a real good horse. We’re probably going to be heading on him more this year.”

Proctor and Churchill had drawn up at a few ropings at Dynamite Arena, in Cave Creek, Arizona, early in the season and decided to direct enter the Finale, marking Proctor’s triumphant return to his roots. Some 12 years ago he had given up jackpot team roping and rodeo to race his newly acquired dream Dodge Viper on the Optima’s Search for the Ultimate Street Car Series. Fast forward to last year when he bought a house in Wittman, Arizona—mainly for its incredible six-car garage— and he bumped into some old rodeo pals who convinced him to purchase a horse and get back in the game.

“Racing is a lot like team roping in a way,” Proctor said. “You travel around the country and have a lot in common with everyone on the circuit. But you really, really have to talk to yourself when you’re racing.”

On the street course racers reach speeds of up to 140 miles per hour between turns and hills. The adrenaline might indeed be pumping a little harder than when you’re backing in the box, even for a $20,000 paycheck, but you get the comparison.

“Racing is a lot like team roping in a way. You travel around the country and have a lot in common with everyone on the circuit. But you really, really have to talk to yourself when you’re racing.” - Lynn Proctor

Proctor competed in his last street car race in Las Vegas last November and the Viper has been on the lift in his garage since. Proctor had planned to leave his Scott Thomas trophy saddle on the shelf too, but after buying another horse on his way home from the Finale, he decided he’d go ahead and use it.

“It fits this new horse like a glove,” Proctor, who turns 59 the day after Christmas, said. His newest addition his horse string will come in handy. Since he’ll turn 60 in the 2021 calendar year, he’ll be able to enter all of the Legends ropings after the new year.