2025 Nutrena Barrel Racing Horse of the Year

Hailey Kinsel and “Sister,” as in 2025 Nutrena Barrel Racing Horse of the Year, Presented by AQHA, DM Sissy Hayday, have been an absolute force for a very long time now in full-throttle performance-horse years. Hailey’s a four-time world champion barrel racer because of her beloved four-legged blonde bomber. Sister also took barrel horse of the year honors in 2018, and they’re running this year at their ninth-straight Wrangler National Finals Rodeo and in strong contention for another gold buckle. Call Sister’s longevity luck, if you like, and a little of that sure never hurts. But the management of and care for Hailey’s once-in-a-lifetime unicorn has everything to do with Sister still loving her job enough to be a world beater.

DM Sissy Hayday is a 2011 palomino mare by PC Frenchmans Hayday and out of the Royal Shake Em mare Royal Sissy Irish. She was bred by Dillon Mundorf of Three Rivers, Texas. 

“There’s a huge attitude on this horse,” Hailey says. “Sister’s confidence in her own ability is amazing, and she has a genuine love for what she’s doing. She loves to run and turn. She lives for it. She has extreme speed and quickness, and can accelerate and decelerate for the turn so fast. Her body coordination is amazing, and even more so at such high speed. Sister’s ability to go from 90 to nothing and vice-versa is insane.”

Sister’s 14 now and joined the Kinsel family as a sassy 2-year-old prospect when Hailey was a freshman in college. They owned a maternal half-sister to her and loved her. Sister being by Sherry Cervi’s “Dinero” – and  Sherry having just won two world titles on another Dinero baby-girl, “Stingray” – also made her attractive. Sister was conformationally correct, and even came with Dinero’s signature half-staff tail when sprinting.

Hailey and her mom, Leslie Kinsel, took their time with young Sister. They turned her out awhile, Leslie rode her on the ranch and moved cattle on her, and Hailey rode the pasture on Sis when home on college breaks. They started “piddling with her on the barrels” the summer of Sister’s 3-year-old year and continued to put in the miles on her on the ranch. Team Kinsel started exhibitioning Sister as a 4-year-old, and Hailey took her back to college at Texas A&M in College Station her junior year.

Together, they started entering in the fall of Sister’s 4-year-old year, and Hailey debuted her at the barrel-horse futurities as a 5-year-old. When did Hailey know this horse was extra special?

“It wasn’t very long after we started entering,” she says. “She was very talented and hard-headed. It was too easy for her, so she was a little bit overconfident. She was not making perfect runs but was still killing the clock. As a 5-year-old, Sister started showing flashes of greatness.”

Hailey has always appreciated her favorite horse and managed her with care. She competed at just 55 of the 100 rodeos allowed barrel racers toward the world standings in the 2025 regular season and only rode Sister at 21 of them. They won money at 20 of the 21.

“Sister matters more to me than hearing my name called on her,” Hailey says. “I trust her to be enough and to win where I take her. I have that much confidence in her, and she has earned it. If I take Sister to 21 rodeos and it’s not enough, I’m OK.”

Hailey and 2024 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champion Kassie Mowry won nine of 10 rounds at last year’s NFR. It was a sudden-death one-header riding into Round 10. And with a gold buckle on the line, Hailey left Sister in her stall.

“Sister won Round 9, but pulled a muscle being last out and 15th on the ground,” Hailey says. “I could have ridden her in Round 10, but she wasn’t at her best. She was tough enough to go again, but not asking that of her felt obvious to me, and I had overwhelming peace about my decision. I didn’t need a fifth world title to happen that way to make me feel whole. It would have been selfish of me to put Sis in that position. If I’m choosing between a fifth gold buckle and my horse, I’m choosing my horse.

“Of all the confidence Sister has in her own ability, she has a ton of confidence in me. I feel like I could ask her to run through a brick wall, and she’d say, ‘How fast?’ She knows I’m not going to put her in a bad position. I genuinely think she trusts that I would only ask her to do something if it was important. And there’s a mutual trust between us that we’ve both earned. When making these decisions, there can sometimes be a fine line between being a horseman and a competitor. First and foremost, I’m a horseman.”

It shows, and the top 25 barrel racers in the world this year gave another nod to her handiwork.

“That’s the coolest part about this award,” Hailey says. “It’s not just that my peers noticed that Sis had an excellent year and has lasted a long time. It’s also that a majority of the people who voted this time are a whole different group of women than voted for Sister to have this honor the first time.

“Sister’s in some super-elite company. Barrel racing is becoming more of an elite field of horses all the time. There have always been great horses in rodeo, but there are more of them now. For Sis to hang with them in this stage of her career is very special. She’s still slamming the clock, and I could not be more proud of her or thankful that we’re in this together.”

Megan McLeod-Sprague’s Seis Corona, aka “Jagger,” is the reserve 2025 barrel horse of the year. Kassie Mowry’s Force The Goodbye, aka “Jarvis,” who won Kassie the 2024 world championship, finished third in the voting, but is not expected to run at the 2025 NFR.