 Hi everyone, it's Simone Cobb with Cutting Horse Training Online. I'm here at Silverado Weatherford, Texas speaking with Jeremy Barwick, the owner of Western Bloodstock who is holding a brand new cutting with the NCHA. It's happening here today. Welcome and how's it all going? Well so far it's going pretty good. After the first set, a four-year-old is leading the set. It's four, five and six-year-olds all showing together in one class. There's 59 in there, 12 go to the finals and only 12. We have a tiebreaker system if any tie for the bottom hole. The open finals will be held Sunday the 12th there in Fort Worth in the Coliseum. So it's called Showdown in Cowtown and it's a slot cutting. So explain what a slot cutting is and how it differs to our usual aged events and weekend events. So in this one we actually have two different cuttings but in this one you can show a four-year-old or a five-year-old or a six-year-old. In this cutting they also have to be entered in a class. They don't have to be the same class at the summer spectacular. So they buy a slot and they can actually show any horse and they can change them and we've had several change horses as long as they were also entered in the summer spectacular also. So what do you think a slot cutting will bring to the industry? What is... What are you trying to achieve here? Well it's something totally different or different from what we've ever done before because we're showing four, five and six-year-olds all together. But it's big payouts. It's paying out the maximum amount of money we can pay out and the bottom hole pays double your entry fee. Trying to just put more money back into our business where horses can win more money, our owners can put more money in their pocket to keep our business going. So as you said it's a hundred slots. The top 20 make the finals. So that's a one in five chance, 20% chance. Pretty good odds of winning either at least double your money back or the big prize. Right. So you can... In this one there's only 12 going back because there's 59 but it's 20% if we'd sold all hundred then it'd have been 20 to the finals. The bottom hole in the open is 10 grand. For this cutting it's still 10,000 for the bottom hole and 60,000 for first. Okay. So each slot that is owned by somebody can actually be held in perpetuity if they pay their annual fee. Is there a danger that this could kind of close off the competition to new blood? No, I don't think so. If we ever got to a point where we had the hundred and then you got a waiting list of 50 to 75 more people you could always add more slots to it. So no, I don't think it... I don't think it excludes anyone because there's going to be times that you have a slot that maybe that year your horse got hurt or you don't have a horse good enough that year you don't think. So you can always sell your slot to one of those guys that are looking for one. So no, I don't think it excludes anyone. And I hear there's some horses are coming out of retirement to come back to this event specifically. Any big name horses? I do know Boyd Rice is going to show third cutting. So yeah, I've heard lots of others but they don't know so I'm not going to spread any rumors but I've heard a lot of really good horses are going to come out of retirement for that one. Okay, the points that people win and the horses do they count towards anything? It all goes against the horses earnings. It's all NCHA approved. There's no horse of the year points and there's no money that counts towards world standings but it's all approved money so it does go against your horse. The real focus is to make more money available for people to win. Right, that's our biggest drawing card to our sport. I mean it's a fun sport but it is an expensive sport so you've got to throw money out there to keep them staying in and to draw in new people. And I guess to give the older horses more events to compete in. Right, you get a lot of those mayors and even stallions that are going out of the aged events that maybe they want to get a little more money on or even a young stallion that's just done showing and just starting breeding and maybe their colts haven't started selling yet and they want to keep that horse in the public eye. If they're still sounding good to go it keeps them in the public eye until their colts start showing where they're really worth a lot of money. One interesting part about these slot cuttings is that you're not going to have any ties. Tell us either to make the final or to win the event to explain that. Okay, so in the go-round we're taking no ties so today in the open there's 59 so that takes 12 horses to the finals. So at the end of the go-round if you have say five horses tied for the bottom hole we'll add all five judges scores together. If that still doesn't break the tie and say then you still have two horses that are tied those two horses will have to work it off to see who advances to the finals. Once we get to the finals there cannot be a tie for the champion. That has to be worked off, the champions check will not be split. A little extra bang for the buck for spectators perhaps. Right, and it encourages those guys you can see it today. They're making some mistakes because they're having to try so hard but it's a lot of money up and you've got to make the finals to get the money. So I think it increases the excitement for the spectators for sure. Definitely, well thanks very much for chatting with us today and we hope it all goes really well. Thank you.