Paint Vegas gamble pays off for Oklahoma couple

Longtime APHA members J.T. and Katie Mitchell of Owasso, Oklahoma, took a gamble on competing at Paint Vegas and it paid off in spades. Most gamblers end up leaving the bulk of their money in Las Vegas— after all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

For the Mitchells, however, they will be taking $46,550 away from
Vegas and back to the Sooner State.

J.T. and Katie Mitchell of Mitchell’s Show Horses in Owasso, Oklahoma, will leave Vegas richer than when they entered. They earned $46,550 at the show and came away big believers in slot competitions that yield big payouts.

The winnings didn’t come from the blackjack table, the roulette wheel
or the slot machines, because they haven’t had time for those yet.
Instead, it came mostly from APHA’s new slot classes.

The Mitchells’ biggest paycheck came in the Maiden Yearling Mares
Slot, with Katie showing her mare, RH Shes Cool, for a championship
title and $25,000. In the Maiden Yearling Stallions and Geldings
Slot, Katie took Reserve Champion and $10,800 with her colt RH
Bentley. Her husband rounded out the show by winning the Championship in Yearling Mares Open Division with RH Shes Cool and earned another $750.

Before they ever stepped foot at Paint Vegas with their horses, the
Mitchells said they liked the idea of the show, the time of year it
was being held and the concept of slot classes. They said it widens
the window of opportunity for exhibitors to show and gives incentives
to people to seek out quality Paint Horses from owners and breeders.

The horses that proved to be money earners were purchased from Robert Haas Jr., of Muncie, Indiana, and were sired by RH Imprinted, the talented stallion he raised. The Mitchells predicted that others
would be searching for future slot winner prospects and that the
competition would have a positive effect for the breeding business.

The monetary rewards, they agreed, give people the incentive to take
a chance on the unknown. “People will start going to farms, filtering
through these big herds of horses that haven’t been sold yet, trying
to pick out the one that might win that $25,000 slot,” Katie said.

In her case, it worked. “I knew that the filly was good, but I knew
that the class was very deep and very strong,” said Katie.

“There were a lot of tough fillies in there and I wasn’t really sure
… Of course you don’t see these fillies. They have not been shown.
Nobody has seen each other’s fillies. To come here blindly and wonder if your filly is going to be the one that wins—it’s the kind of thing that keeps you driving forward. It keeps you more competitive and it keeps you working hard.

“Competition drives me. I would rather go through life taking those
chances than to stay in my own little backyard and know that I can
win there. I know that I can do that.

“But, if there’s $25,000 to be had, I’m going to jump out there and
try to get it just like everyone else.”

When they are not exhibiting, the Mitchells can usually be found
camped outside their stalls, extolling the virtues of American Paint
Horses to Paint Vegas visitors.

Invite family and friends back home to
take a “virtual seat” at Paint Vegas
Now that you’ve seen the exciting competition at Paint Vegas, don’t
you wish your friends and family back home could witness it as well?

Well, if they have a computer, they can. Just have them log on to
aphapaintvegas.com and click on “Live Video.” Next to being here,
it’s the best seat in the house.

With two roaming cameras and one set up at mid-arena, the video feed features three different perspectives. Technicians in a control room high above the arena, known as “the crow’s nest” coordinate the
camera feeds for smooth transitions, much like a television-broadcast
sporting event. The feed is then channeled to HorseCity.com, which
makes the broadcast available to everyone in the world with a computer.

“Whatever you see up on the scoreboard is what you see on the
streaming video broadcast,” said Rob Owens, of APHA’s IT department. Perched in the crow’s nest, Owens handles the technical details of the streaming while Glen Tubbesing, production manager of Caples Productions in Las Vegas, coordinates the camerawork and views to the scoreboard and HorseCity.com.

So phone home and tell the family to log on to aphapaintvegas.com.

And if you want to review the action that takes place at Paint Vegas,
visit a representative from “Ready Replay” in the arena. Some DVD’s
of classes are available now, and classes that take place later in
the show may be ordered. Or, for your convenience, you can access
Ready Replay on-line to do your ordering. Just visit aphapaintvegas.com and click on the Ready Replay link.