5 Star Champion: Randy Britton

Pickup man Randy Britton has 154 performances under his belt and thousands of miles on his odometer from the 2023 rodeo season alone. Working for Cervi Championship Rodeo since 2012 has kept the Kiowa, Colorado cowboy involved in the sport that hooked him from boyhood.
“I started rodeoing when I was 12 or so. Me and a group of friends thought it was a good idea and we rode bulls for a while. Then I rode broncs until 2005 when I broke my neck, so I had to quit. I’d started picking up a little bit in 2002 when a friend of mine started an amateur rodeo company, and I did high school and Little Britches rodeos. Come 2005, I was trying to decide what route to take, because it would be hard to do them both [compete and pickup] but breaking my neck helped me decide. They said I could never ride bucking horses again, and I never asked if I could ride a horse again,” Randy says with a laugh.
He landed a few rodeos with Cervi Championship Rodeo in 2012 and was brought on full time in 2014. Randy has eight geldings he can work off of right now, the youngest of them a 6-year-old blue roan named Levi. He’s particularly excited for Levi’s future since he and his wife, Kathryn, purchased the gelding as a weanling and spent the last five years working with him. “I just started picking up on him this year. He’s matured a lot this year and I think he’s going to be really good. Miss Rodeo America rode him in Colorado Springs this summer. She got seven or eight calls from people trying to buy him. He’s a true blue roan and a pretty flashy little horse.”
Randy and Kathryn recently sold their broodmares and decided to go back to buying yearlings or the occasional ranch-broke horses, who transition into picking up nicely. They also have a weanling and 2, 3, and 4-year-olds coming along from their breeding program. “Kathryn is in charge of the young horses, and when we had the mares, she figured out what studs to breed them to. She’s very good at that. We had cow horse bred mares and bred them to barrel-type studs who could run but weren’t super hot, so it was trying to find that balance.” Some of the bloodlines they sought out included Sun Frost, Peppy San Badger, and Driftwood.
Taking care of his horses is paramount to the success of Randy’s work. One of the ways he does this is choosing quality sport boots and saddle pads, which led him to 5 Star Equine’s products this year. “I’ve always heard good things about their pads and I needed some new ones this summer. I talked to them about getting sponsored, and luckily enough they thought it was a good idea to pick me,” says Randy. “I’ve had a few horses that are hard to keep saddles tight on, especially when they’re getting jerked on pretty hard from roping. I put a 5 Star pad on my yellow horse who’s been that way for years, and I had to keep backing my cinch off. It was not nearly as tight as it used to be. They form to the horses and when you pull the pads off they have perfect sweat marks.” Randy also appreciates the safety 5 Star’s sport boots offer his horses’ legs while they work next to broncs and bulls in the rodeo arena. “With two straps on the bottom instead of one it feels like you can get them snug. And a lot of boots I’ve had heck with filling up with dirt and these ones don’t do that. They’re taller than a lot of boots, so they cover more surface area, which is important for me.”
Randy is enjoying being home more this time of year with his wife and their four-year-old daughter, Tessa. His rodeo schedule picks right up starting with Denver in January, followed by San Antonio and Houston, where he stays for about two months straight. Kathryn and Tessa often fly out to visit him for several weeks during that time, and they hope to travel with him more as Tessa gets older. Randy has been chosen to work the Mountain States Circuit Finals three times, and the 2022 NFR Open. “I’d like to pick up the NFR ones of these days,” he finishes. “That’s really the only thing left on that list to get.”