Charles and Jeannie Pircher’s gelding, Tribute To Pizzazz, won the world championship in open 2-year-old geldings, led by trainer and AQHA Pro Horseman Luke Castle of Wayne, Oklahoma.

All five judges had him first on their cards.

“I bought him last year right after the (All American Quarter Horse) Congress,” Castle said. “And Charles bought him in May.”

The horse was a stallion until just recently.

“We qualified him as a 2-year-old stud, and had collected him and froze some semen,” Castle said. “We’ve got about 60 doses of semen saved back to breed mares with. We didn’t want to promote him, but we wanted to get some babies out of him.”

Tribute To Pizzazz wins the open 2-year-old geldings world championship led by Luke Castle of Wayne, Oklahoma. The gelding placed first under all five judges.

“He’s a handful, but he’s kind of cool,” Pircher said. “(I like) his size and the way he’s put together. He’s just a lot of horse for a 2-year-old. He looks like a 3-year-old or an aged horse.”

“He’s always ready to go,” Castle added. “If you saw him in the pen today, he was fired up! He’s a very alert horse. It doesn’t take much to get his ears up and get him shown. He loves to go show.

“We’ve had a lot of fun with him.”

In addition to showing halter horses, Pircher also owns Paradise Farms Equine Genetics LLC, an equine reproduction and embryo transfer facility in Boerne, Texas. He also raises and campaigns bucking bulls in the Professional Bull Riders Inc.

Are there any similarities between showing halter horses and bucking bulls?

“They pretty much like to go show,” he said. “They love going to a competition.”

“I’d like to thank Luke and Abbi (Castle) for all their work,” Pircher added. “We haltered a lot this year and had a lot of fun. It’s been a good year for us.”