Nine Years of the AQHA Pleasure Versatility Challenge — and the Stallion Whose Shadow Falls Across All of Them

Seventeen three-year-old American Quarter Horses will walk into the OG&E Coliseum at 6 p.m. on Saturday, November 14, for the ninth running of the AQHA Pleasure Versatility Challenge, presented by Super Sires. By the end of the night one of them will have proven what the event was built to test: that a horse can move, behave and be built correctly, all in the same hour, in front of the same judges.

StallionCompare is a proud sponsor of the AQHA Pleasure Versatility Challenge and its Official Digital & Historical Partner. We maintain the event's permanent competitive record — every placing, every section win and every horse that has contested it since 2018 — at stallioncompare.com/aqha-pvc.

Ahead of Saturday, here is what eight years of that record shows.

A test built from a complaint

The Challenge began with a conversation rather than a rulebook. At the 2017 AQHA World Show, the AQHA Executive Committee held a town hall for western pleasure enthusiasts, and out of that meeting came a proposal: an event rewarding the horse that could do more than one thing well.

The format has barely changed since. Horses are shown sequentially in three phases on the same night — a versatility pattern blending simplified trail and western riding manoeuvres, counting 40 percent; a western pleasure class, counting 40 percent; and conformation, counting 20 percent. The field is capped at 20, open to three-year-olds, and the order of go is drawn the evening before.

The eligibility rule is the one that shapes the entries. A horse cannot have been shown astride in western riding, trail or any comparable versatility event before the World Show entry deadline of September 15. After that date it can show anywhere without forfeiting eligibility. There is no restriction at all on the western pleasure or conformation phases. Money won here does not count against AQHA leveling eligibility, which lets a young horse contest a $55,000 purse without spending its own levels.

Terry Bradshaw Quarter Horses carried the event as title sponsor through its first four years. Super Sires took over in 2022 and has since committed through 2027.

Eight champions

Blake Weis has won it three times, in 2019, 2020 and 2022 — a record no other rider has approached.

Read that pedigree column from top to bottom and one name keeps surfacing.

The stallion behind the Challenge

RL Best Of Sudden is the damsire of four of the eight champions — KM Flat Out The Best, Snap It Send It, Queen Ov Hearts and Jiminy Cricket. He sired the fifth, Hot Lopin Lily, outright. Twenty-two horses in the event's history are out of his daughters, and he sired nine more himself.

That is five of the eight champions crowned so far, produced across four different sires and four different trainers, under a format specifically designed to stop any one type of horse dominating. Lily was by him. The other four were out of his daughters.

Known as "Bo," he was a 2002 bay stallion by A Sudden Impulse and out of the Therapy mare Zip N Therapy, bred and owned by Ken and Marilyn Masterson of Masterson Farms, LLC. He announced himself as a show horse by winning the Reichert 2-Year-Old Western Pleasure $100,000 Open Challenge. What followed made that look like a footnote:

• All-Time Leading AQHA and NSBA Sire in Western All-Around events, by both money earned and points awarded
• 1,406 AQHA foals, of which 607 earned money and 657 earned points
• More than $5.29 million in offspring earnings and over 142,970 AQHA points
• 964 AQHA Superior awards, 2,300 ROMs and 173 AQHA Champions
• 23 AQHA World Champions and 34 Reserve World Champions

Bo was humanely euthanized on June 1, 2025, following complications from surgery for a strangulating lipoma. Saturday will be the first Pleasure Versatility Challenge contested since his death.

His influence on this event runs deeper than the win column. Masterson Farms bred the very first champion, KM Flat Out The Best, in 2018. And the 2024 reserve champion, First Thingz First — who won both the western pleasure and conformation phases that year, plus the Fan Favorite vote — is by RL Best Of Sudden and out of a VS Code Red mare. Few sires have shaped a single event so thoroughly, and fewer still have done it from the dam's side of the page.

The cross that keeps winning

If RL Best Of Sudden is the Challenge's dominant damsire, Machine Made is its dominant sire — and the two of them together have produced more of this event's history than any other combination.

Machine Made has sent 20 starters to the Challenge, nearly one in five of every horse that has ever contested it, and he has done it in all eight years. Two of them won: RV Not For Hire in 2022 and Queen Ov Hearts in 2023. Fourteen have finished in the top ten.

Put him over an RL Best Of Sudden mare and the record gets stronger still. Nine horses in the event's history come from that exact cross, worth $34,000 between them, and they account for the 2023 champion, the 2023 conformation winner, a second, a fourth, a seventh and an eighth.

Leading sires — by placings and titles, 2018–2025

Leading damsires — by placings and titles, 2018–2025

Leading producers — dams with more than one starter

Snap Krackle Pop is the only mare to send three horses to the Challenge, and the 2019 champion Snap It Send It is among them. HP Only The Best produced the 2023 champion Queen Ov Hearts and, a year later, Jack Attackk.

By the money

The Challenge has paid out $405,000 across eight runnings — $50,000 a year to the top ten, plus the $5,000 Limited division introduced in 2025.

Leading dams

Seven other mares sit on $10,000 apiece, each from a single champion.

RL Best Of Sudden's $96,000 as a damsire is the largest figure in the event's history by some distance — more than the top two sires behind Machine Made combined. Taken across both generations, 31 of the 110 placings in Challenge history, better than one in four, carry him as sire or damsire, worth $135,000 of the $405,000 ever paid out. A third of the money the Pleasure Versatility Challenge has distributed has gone to a horse he sired or grandsired.

Compiled from StallionCompare's PVC records. Pedigree is on file for 109 of the event's 110 placings, covering 99% of all purse money.

The event starts breeding its own

In 2020, a Machine Made colt out of an RL Best Of Sudden mare finished second in the Pleasure Versatility Challenge. His name was Nothin But Nett.

Five years later, in 2025, his first crop arrived — and three of them made the top ten:

They tied with each other for the pattern win. Go Swish also took the Limited division and the work saddle. From a single first crop, one stallion produced the champion, the Limited winner and a tenth — $19,500 of a $55,000 night.

He is not quite the first to do it: VS Goodride, tenth in the inaugural 2018 running, had two of his get contest the 2025 event. But no returning competitor has sired a champion before.

It is a neat piece of symmetry for an event not yet a decade old. The horses that contested the early Challenges are now old enough to send their own, and the first one to try won it at the first attempt.

Winning a phase, losing the night

The three-phase format produces a particular kind of near-miss, and the record is full of them.

Only one horse has ever swept all three phases: Hot Lopin Lily took the pattern, the western pleasure and the conformation in 2020, then won the whole thing. Snap It Send It came closest otherwise, winning pattern and western pleasure on the way to the 2019 title.

Going the other way, First Thingz First won two phases of three in 2024 and still finished second — beaten by Jiminy Cricket, who won only the pattern. In 2022, the three phases went to three different horses, and the conformation winner, RV Not For Hire, took the night.

Phase winners by year

There is also the award nobody enters for. From the first running, Blue Ribbon Custom Tack has presented a work saddle built on a Shane Dowdy tree to the horse finishing eleventh — one place outside the money. Legacy Made and Jason Gilliam took the first in 2018, followed by KM Its About Time in 2019, Cant Be Blue in 2022, Best Luken Valentine in 2023 and Jack Attackk in 2024. In 2025 the saddle moved to the Limited division winner, Go Swish, who finished fourth overall and topped the Limited standings.

The 2026 field

Seventeen horses are entered, four of them in the Limited division.

The $5,000 VS Code Blue and VS Goodride Limited division returns for a second year, sponsored by Kathy and Jerry Tobin in the names of their stallions. It pays up to four placings on a 40-30-20-10 basis, and it is aimed squarely at riders still building a record: exhibitors eligible for Level 2 in both western riding and trail qualify, while past or future overall PVC winners and NSBA Quarter Million Dollar Club members are excluded.

Last year it paid exactly that way — $2,000 to Go Swish, $1,500 to Beecuz I Said So, $1,000 to Hay Ladies and $500 to Good Going Rosita. Three of those four finished eighth or lower overall, which is the point: the Limited standings are scored among eligible exhibitors, not against the full field.

Eleven riders who have been here before

Of the seventeen exhibitors, eleven have contested the Challenge before. Between them they account for four of the eight titles.

Gil Galyean has started in all eight runnings, the only rider who can say so. He won in 2023 with Queen Ov Hearts, was third in 2021 with VS Bettin On Red, fourth in 2024 with Total Knockoutt, and fifth last year with Sinful Legazy, sharing the conformation title. He rides Made It A Holiday.

Jesse Jones is the defending champion, having won 2025 with The Goldenn Girl and shared the pattern title. He has two rides this year, Its A Holiday and The Gambler — the only exhibitor with more than one horse in the field.

Aaron Moses owns the event's longest-running near-miss. He has won the western pleasure phase three times — with VS The Fireman in 2022, First Thingz First in 2024 and Shivering in 2025 — and both Fan Favorite awards ever given. Across four starts he has finished third, second, second and third. He has never won it. He rides Only On Nettflix.

Anthony Montes won in 2024 with Jiminy Cricket, taking the pattern on the way. He rides Made For Lookn.

Chad Evans has the second-longest record in the field, with five starts going back to the inaugural 2018 event, where he won the pattern on Florida Georgia Line. He also won the conformation phase in 2019 with Extremely Salty and again in 2021 with Straight Up Lazy. He rides Ace In The Holee.

Shannon Curl-Holbin was reserve champion last year with Ten Kinda Southern, sharing the conformation title. She rides U Cant Sit With Us for Gumz Farms, who both bred and own the horse.

Houston Huff has three starts, placing seventh in 2024 with Lopin For Maggie and eleventh last year with Hay Ladies. He contests the Limited division on Thatcertainsomethin.

Katy Jo Zuidema won the first-ever western pleasure phase in 2018 on Best Brew At The Bar and returned last year to finish ninth with Frank The Tankk. She rides Ten Four Good Buddie.

Kyle Dougherty was seventh last year with Make N Bacon. He rides Stoppin For Cookis, by Heart Stoppin out of The Cooki Monster.

Carly Parks returns for the first time since 2021. She rides Fat Gary.

Six riders make their Challenge debut: Matthew Olson, Jeff Mellott, Brad Ost, Clay Arrington, Martin Doustou and Alexandria Bryner.

Sponsors

The 2026 Challenge carries $55,000 in total purse plus prizes. Super Sires returns as title sponsor, Cimarron Trailers sponsors the pattern phase and The Equine Chronicle the western pleasure. Blue Ribbon Custom Tack continues as official tack sponsor, and Kathy's Show Equipment & Sterling Custom Saddles joins this year as official show equipment sponsor. The Limited division is sponsored by Kathy and Jerry Tobin.

StallionCompare is a proud sponsor of both the AQHA Pleasure Versatility Challenge and Super Sires, and serves as the Official Digital & Historical Partner of the PVC.

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The ninth AQHA Pleasure Versatility Challenge, presented by Super Sires, runs at 6 p.m. CST on Saturday, November 14, in the OG&E Coliseum at the Markel AQHA World Championship Show in Oklahoma City.

Complete results from every running since 2018 are at stallioncompare.com/aqha-pvc. We will publish full 2026 results, with pedigree analysis, after the event.