It may not be essential to becoming national youth ranch horse champions to live just down the road from the only arena in the country that stages monthly events, but it probably helps.

Twelve-year-old Chloe Gregory, senior youth high points champion 2024 and brother George, (10) junior youth high points champion 2024, discovered at the national Ranch Horse Association awards in early March that the points they had amassed from January to December last year were enough to see them both crowned respective champions.

They were each awarded a buckle, named jacket and Western riding saddle at the awards dinner on March 8 in recognition of their efforts.

Neither were exactly sure they were winners beforehand.

“You're earning points every weekend,” Mum Rebecca Gregory said.

“So you don't have presentations or ribbons every weekend. Points just quietly accumulate in the background.”

Though they had their suspicions.

“George was looking for the youth buckle (on the prize table) because they name them, but he couldn't find it.”

Ranch Horse Association events are held one weekend every month at the Taupō Western Riding Grounds behind the Oruanui Pony Club, a short trip for the Gregorys who live on Tuhingamata Road.

Other competitors now come from Wanganui, Masterton, Tauranga, Ohakune, Raetihi, said Rebecca.

“There used to only be basically Chloe and George and another girl from Whanganui but now some weekends it’s like 28, I think in the December one. Not quite as many for the national show, but probably about 12 or 15.”

It is father Daniel’s side of the family that has led the two into riding and they are often to be found at their grandparents’ place – also not far away.

“Steve, their grandpa, does a lot of the training with them. He and Julie have got a big part to play in the kids riding horses,” said Rebecca.

“They got into ranch horse probably a couple of years ago. Now our life revolves around the second weekend every month. Whereas before it was ‘oh it’s ranch horse this weekend’ and we might go if we made it, now it's every month except July and August.”

The two have also taken their skills in cutting (sorting a young cattle beast out from a group) to NZ Cutting Horse Association events – the discipline Steve and Julie pursue – which sees them travelling to the likes of Taihape, Stratford and Whangarei.

As well as cattle events like team penning, team sorting, boxing, cutting and ranch roping, ranch riding also involves games such as barrel racing, pole bending and ring racing.

“The kids love it because they get to do heaps of things… they're just riding most of the day.”

And the two are keen to continue in future and not averse to suggestions of pursuing careers mustering stock (as their father has done in the Pilbara in Western Australia), taking treks or rodeo or stunt riding.

George already has something of a reputation after an incident where his girth strap broke, the saddle slipped off meaning he had to ride bare back but then he fell off and had to hotfoot it to the other side of the ring to catch his mount Coco.

The George and Coco phenomenon had been enhanced by him being the only boy competing for a while, said Chloe, earning him encouraging shouts from watching men to ‘do it for the boys’.

But other than this scrape and the odd fall Chloe has experienced it’s “a good healthy pastime in the outdoors, learning a skill that not a lot of people have these days,” Rebecca says.

Although it may mean eventually, the Gregorys have to sacrifice their one flat paddock for their own training arena.

“The horses are taking over I tell you. Eating all the grass, taking our weekends but the kids love it.”