story by Lindsay Whelchel
Going fast seems to be a common theme in the life of newly-turned 18-year-old Australian cowgirl Chloe Cox. Her family moved to America for Chloe’s brother to be able to pursue auto racing when Chloe was around 10, and she quickly took her interest in horses to an adrenaline inducing level herself by beginning to barrel race and breakaway rope as a teen. Chloe comes from a rodeo family. Her dad was a bullfighter and comedy clown, and her mom was a barrel racer back home in Australia.
Chloe has carried on the tradition from their new home base of North Carolina. She started out doing high school rodeo but soon realized she wanted to take her competition up a notch to pro rodeo. This is now Chloe’s first year in the International Professional Rodeo Association where she’s competed in barrels and breakaway roping, but has focused primarily on roping this season. And it’s made an impact. She’s shot to the top of the leaderboard in the Cowgirls Breakaway Roping Rookie Standings and is in the top-10 of the world standings.
She credits her parents and sponsors, as well as several close friends and fellow IPRA competitors with helping keep her motivated and going down the road. That includes Jamie and Zach Hall who let her live and haul with them for two months this past summer to make all of the fair rodeos and really helped Chloe with her roping and her rise to the top of the standings on the way to her first International Finals Rodeo Qualification. In September she was able to experience rodeo north of the border competing for her first time at Festival Western de St. Tite where she cites Bradley Chance Hays with helping to make the trip possible by allowing her to ride one of his mares.
“Getting to go up north was a crazy experience not being able to speak French. It was definitely interesting and the French [Canadians] were very accommodating trying to help us out,” she says and adds of Hays’ help, “that was a cool experience just getting to jump on another horse I’d never ridden and getting to compete at something that big.”
A highlight for Chloe has also been meeting a lot of new people and friends of friends on the rodeo road. Back home the Cox family stays very busy and involved in the horse world with their trailer company SC Trailers. The whole family works in the business, and it’s paying off, as they’re booked well into next year. Their work translates well to Chloe’s rodeo career.
“Getting to travel as much as we do, we see our trailers on the road, and that’s really cool,” Chloe enthuses.
To stay motivated this year, Chloe wrote a letter to herself in the beginning of the season, only to be opened just before competing at the IFR she says to, “remind myself it’s a huge accomplishment and just to enjoy everything I’ve gotten to do this year, because next year I’ll be in college, and things will be different, but just be thankful I got to do so much this year, and God’s given me this talent to be able to rope as well as I have.” And it looks like she’ll be reading that letter come January.
Next year Chloe hopes to attend college and college rodeo in Oklahoma and study to become a physician’s assistant. In the meantime, she plans to finish the year strong gunning to become the IPRA’s 2017 Rookie of the Year.
Chloe would like to thank her parents, SCTrailers, Shorty’s Caboy Hattery, Tres Rios Silver, Twin Oaks Equine Clinic, JL Gate Co., Horse Trailer Monitor, RUMBER, US Rider, and Aubree Davis with Oxy-Gen.
