Cinch Timed Event Championship-CALIFORNIA GOLD

CALIFORNIA GOLD 

Taylor Santos Claims His Second Ironman Title, Joining an Elite Club of Multiple Champions, as California Cowboys Once Again Define the Story at the Cinch Timed Event Championship 

By Dee Yates 

There is a banner that hangs from the rafters of the Legendary Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, Oklahoma, with Leo Camarillo’s name on it. Two of them, in fact, one for 1985 and one for 1989. For forty-one years those two banners told a story no one else had been able to match. On the night of March 7, 2026, Taylor Santos of Creston, California did exactly that. 

The Lion would have approved. 

Leo Camarillo, the ProRodeo Hall of Famer raised in the Santa Ynez Valley and transplanted to Oakdale, California, which he called the mecca for cowboys, won the very first Cinch Timed Event Championship ever held in 1985, then came back and claimed it again in 1989. He was the inaugural Ironman, the original, a roping revolutionary who took the all-around test built for the toughest cowboys in the world and made it his own twice. Leo passed away in December 2020, but his name still hangs from those rafters. On Saturday night, a California cowboy put his name up there alongside it for the second time. 

What happened in Guthrie in 2026 was not an accident, and it was not a surprise to anyone paying close attention to the history of this event. In forty-one years of Cinch Timed Event Championship competition, California cowboys have claimed the Ironman title ten times across five different champions. Ten titles from one state, in an event that draws the best all-around hands from every corner of the country. That number tells its own story, and every name attached to it earned it the hard way. 

Leo Camarillo started it all, and he started it twice. Born in the Santa Ynez Valley and raised in Oakdale in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, Camarillo was a four-time world team roping champion, the 1975 world all-around co-champion, and an original inductee into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1979. At the Timed Event, he won the first championship ever contested in 1985 and came back to win it again in 1989. His 3.3-second steer wrestling record, set at the Lazy E in 1986, still stands today. He was working ranch country through and through, a cowboy who competed across every discipline with the same ferocity he brought to the rope, and his two banners in Guthrie were as hard-earned as anything in rodeo history. 

Daniel Green of Oakdale, California, picked up the California standard and carried it further than anyone. A 10-time National Finals Rodeo header and one of the most complete all-around cowboys the state has ever produced, Green won the Timed Event Championship three times, in 2002, 2008, and 2013, with more than a decade of sustained excellence between his first title and his last. He competed at the Timed Event for twenty-five years before making his final run in 2022 to a standing ovation, leaving the Lazy E Arena with three championship banners and a reputation as the most decorated California Ironman in the event’s history. He was back in Guthrie in 2026, not as a competitor, but riding as heading and heeling help for his son Eli in the Junior Ironman. The torch does not go out with those cowboys. It gets handed down. 

Kyle Lockett of Visalia, California, is the kind of man this event was built for. A nine-time NFR qualifier with more than $247,000 earned at the Timed Event Championship alone, Lockett has made the trip to Guthrie in 24 of the 30 years he has been competing, a level of commitment that puts him in a category by himself. He won the Ironman in 2005, came back and won it again in 2011, and has continued to show up year after year as one of the most reliable all-around performers on the roster. He was on the 2026 starting list at 48 years old, still roping, still competing, still making the drive to Oklahoma. There is no finish line for cowboys like Lockett. 

Jordan Ketscher of Squaw Valley, California, announced himself to the Timed Event world in 2018 in about the loudest way imaginable. In only his second appearance at the championship, Ketscher roped, wrestled, and tied 25 animals in 324.3 seconds to win the title, finishing nearly 20 seconds clear of the field and becoming the 14th man in the event’s 34-year history to claim the Ironman crown. He was 28 years old, a California all-around hand who had grown up watching this event and then simply went out and won it. One title, one of the cleanest performances the Lazy E had seen in years. 

Which brings the story to Santos. The two-time NFR tie-down roper and National Finals Steer Roping qualifier from Creston won his first Ironman title in 2020 on his very first appearance at the Timed Event, joining a short list of men who have won it in their debut. He was the latest in a California line that stretched back forty years to Camarillo, and he knew it. Santos once said it made him proud to carry on a great tradition started by legends like Leo Camarillo, a close family friend. Then came the surgeries. Both hips, one knee. Three procedures, years of recovery, and a road back that would have finished lesser competitors for good. Santos returned to the Lazy E in 2026 for the first time since 2023 and he did not come back to simply compete. 

He came back to win. 

Santos was in command from the opening bell. A 69.8-second Round One put him near the top of the field, and a 68.9-second Round Two pushed his aggregate to 138.7 seconds and handed him the overall lead in the championship race, a position he would never surrender. Round Three brought a crisp 63.2-second performance, including a 7.4-second heading and a 17.5-second steer roping, and his cushion grew to more than 30 seconds at 201.9 seconds on three head. The lead stretched to 273.2 after four rounds and a coronation seemed at hand heading into the final Saturday night performance. 

Then Ketch Kelton had something to say about it. 

Kelton, the 2025 Ironman champion and the youngest man ever to claim that title at 19 years old, delivered a blazing 55.0-second championship round that included a 7.3-second heading, 13.3 seconds in tie-down roping, and 13.4 seconds in steer roping to dramatically close the gap. With one event remaining, just 11.9 seconds separated the two men going into the steer roping. Santos missed his steer and was forced into recovery mode. The crowd felt every second of it. Santos responded the way champions do, finishing the steer roping in 22.5 seconds for a round total of 78.5 seconds. When the final math settled, Santos’ five-round aggregate clocked at 351.7 seconds to Kelton’s 354.5, a margin of 2.8 seconds. More than 100 seconds separated the pair from third place. 

The $100,000 championship check went west. Santos had done it again, and the tenth California title in Cinch Timed Event Championship history was his. 

The California flag flew beyond the winner’s circle on Saturday night. Brushton Minton of Witter Springs, a small mountain community west of Red Bluff in Northern California, finished fifth in the aggregate at 450.5 seconds in a strong all-around performance. Minton is a two-time NFR qualifier in tie-down roping and a fourth-generation roper whose father Casey won the Linderman Award, meaning he was bred for exactly this kind of multi-discipline test. He stepped into Kyle Lockett’s roster spot in 2024 when the fellow Californian was sidelined and has returned each year as one of the most capable all-around hands in the game. 

In the Junior Ironman, the California story continued in the most fitting way possible. Leo Loucks of Pittsburg, Illinois, dominated the three-round competition to claim the championship with a 154.0-second aggregate on twelve head, more than 80 seconds clear of the field. He was wire-to-wire and never in doubt. But the reserve Jr. Ironman title belonged to California. James Mann of Tehachapi, California, the defending 2025 Jr. Ironman champion, returned to Guthrie and backed up his championship with a runner-up finish at 235.7 seconds. Two trips to the Lazy E, two top-two finishes. That is a standard that speaks for itself. 

And then there was Eli Green. Daniel Green’s son, also from Oakdale, California, finished seventh in the Jr. Ironman aggregate at 352.2 seconds, competing under the same rafters where his father’s three championship banners hang. Daniel rode alongside him as his heading and heeling help, a three-time Ironman champion back on the Lazy E dirt not for prize money but to give his boy the best chance he could. There are not many scenes in Western sports more worth writing about than that one. 

In forty-one years of Cinch Timed Event Championship history, only a handful of men have won it more than once. Trevor Brazile won it seven times. K.C. Jones won it five. Paul Tierney Sr. four times. Jimmie Cooper, Daniel Green, and Paul David Tierney Jr. each won it three times. Kyle Lockett, Leo Camarillo, and now Taylor Santos have won it twice. Of all those men, five are from California. Of all those titles, ten belong to the Golden State. 

There is a banner going up in Guthrie right now with Santos’ name on it for the second time. Leo Camarillo’s is still up there, alongside Daniel Green’s three, alongside Kyle Lockett’s two, alongside Jordan Ketscher’s one. From the Santa Ynez Valley to Oakdale, from Visalia to Squaw Valley to Creston, from Witter Springs to Tehachapi to Oakdale again in the next generation, California keeps finding its way onto those walls. 

Ten titles. Five champions. One state. And counting.