Never has a stallion performed at such an elite level in his futurity career as Gucci Equine’s Nu One Time Blues.
Joseph Harrison rode Gucci Equine’s Nu One Time Blues to the Heel Horse of the BFI Title on his way to the Feist’s Reserve Championship in March 29, marking the 6-year-old stallion’s largest win to date on the elite Open roping level.
The win—for a time of 42.83 on the Feist’s grueling six head—was worth $42,500 a man for Harrison and his partner Bubba Buckaloo. That money put Nu One Time Blues’ lifetime earnings to $270,960 just a few months into his final year of futurity eligibility.
Nu One Time Blues made the finals and finished 10th at the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity in 2022 with Matt Koch before selling to the Smith and Richey family’s Premier Rope Horses. Harrison showed “Boujee” for Premier before Gucci Equine acquired the horse in 2024.
“He’s bred to be something special,” Harrison, the three-time NFR heeler and four-time ARHFA World Champion, said. “You don’t have to be all that careful about what you breed him to. He’s got great foot speed, good feel and a lot of try. That’s hard to find.”
Bred by the Sellers Ranch, the 2019 stallion Nu One Time Blues is by One Time Pepto out of Nu Bay Be Blue by Nu Cash.
“When Jay and Lindsay Wadhams started their deal, Jay’s exact words were, ‘We need to get away from this, the regular show-horse deal,’” Harrison said. “‘We need to start coming up with some nice young rope horses that we might eventually ride, say, at the BFI.’ Those were his words. What a better way to prove it than—before he’s even aged out of the futurities—he’s already won second at the BFI and they voted him the horse of the roping. For a young stud, those are huge honors, man. He did really good all day, which he had been doing that good before and that’s why I rode him there. He wanted to go, so I took him.
Nu One Time Blues is part of a larger push by breeders and trainers to develop high-performance rope horses that can compete beyond the confines of traditional show rings. With an emphasis on real-world, lucrative competition on display at the Feist, Boujee’s success signals his leadership in this new era of the rope horse business.
“These horses aren’t just running one steer in a low-pressure environment anymore,” Harrison explained. “Even at 4, they’re making multiple high-stress runs at futurities. The ones that stay sound and sane through that—those are the ones you can count on.”
Boujuee’s performance at the BFI proved just that. Despite his age, he held up through the grueling event, which tests even the best of ProRodeo over six head and an 19-foot score. Boujee’s so good, he makes Harrison, whose been off the rodeo road for a few years, consider putting his name down again.
“He’s got all the right tools,” Harrison said. “If I ever got the itch again, he’s the kind of horse I could take just about anywhere. He’s tough-made. You don’t need a trailer full—you just need him.”
With his first foals hitting the ground and his resume growing, Nu One Time Blues is shaping up to be more than just a promising prospect—he’s becoming a legitimate force in the rope horse world. The ARHFA 4-year-old World Champion in 2023 and the Old West Futurity Reserve Champion in 2024, Nu One Time Blues is already setting the standard.
“You can’t ambush a One Time Pepto,” Harrison said. “You’ve got to let them learn. But once they do? They’ll give you everything they’ve got. One Time Peptos are predominantly a little stingy, which is what I love about them: they’ve got enough guts, they’ve got enough try.”