Heritage Hall of Fame inductee Richard Webb competing in the sport that has shaped his life for more than 40 years. Photo: Richard Webb.
For Richard Webb, horses were never a choice – they were an inheritance.
He was born into a family split evenly between two great strands of Australian horsemanship. His mother’s side carried the blood of racehorse training and Olympic show jumping, while his father’s people, the Webbs, were cattle people – drovers and stockmen at heart, with a good measure of rodeo and competitive polocrosse woven through their bloodlines. Horses were simply part of who they were.
Some of Webb’s fondest memories are of walking family cattle into the Snowy Mountains each spring before spending summers living in mountain huts.
“It was a child’s paradise,” he says of those years – a foundation that made a life with horses feel less like a decision and more like destiny.
It’s a path that, decades later, would carry him back across a timeline he’d crossed once before.
The Australian Equine and Livestock Events Centre (AELEC) in Tamworth has become the spiritual home of Australian cutting, hosting the sport’s biggest events since opening in 2008.
Webb knows the arena better than most. In 2008, as president of NCHA Australia, he became the first rider ever to cross its timeline.
Eighteen years on, at this year’s Tamworth Futurity in June – the marquee event on the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Australia calendar – he crossed it again, this time on foot, to be inducted into the Heritage Hall of Fame in front of the peers, family and industry legends he’d spent his career alongside.
“It was quite a surprise, to be quite honest,” Webb says.
“You never think of yourself that way. I’ve sat there as president of the NCHA and watched other people receive those awards. You know exactly what they’ve done for the industry and you think it’s unbelievable. You never imagine you’ll be standing on the other side receiving one yourself.”
To understand why the industry honoured him, you have to go back to where Richard Webb’s own education in cutting began.
That destiny took a sharp turn in his late teens, when Webb followed his older brother Phil to the United States.
What began as a working holiday – rodeoing and drifting through ranch jobs in South Dakota with his brother Steve – became something far more formative.
At the big western fairs and gatherings, Webb encountered cutting for the first time and it left him transfixed.
If you’ve watched the series Yellowstone, you’ve seen cutting in action. A rider separates a single cow from the herd, then drops their hand and lets the horse take over – reading every move the cow makes, blocking its every attempt to slip back into the mob.
The sport traces back to the vaqueros of old Spanish and Mexican ranches, who needed horses capable of holding a single animal away from the herd for branding or doctoring, unaided.
What began as a practical ranching skill has evolved into an elite equestrian sport, but it’s that partnership between horse and rider that remains at its heart.
“The ultimate for me was seeing someone put their hand down and trust the horse completely,” Webb says.
“That horse is relying on its training and instincts and doing its job without you ever picking up a rein. To this day, I respect every horse discipline, but there is still no other discipline where you put your hand down and let the horse actually do the job.”
Chasing knowledge, Webb returned to the US, studying under renowned trainer Tom Lyons before spending several years with another respected horseman in California.
“I thought I could ride before I went to the States,” he says, “I quickly realised riding was just sitting on a horse. Being a horseman and learning horsemanship was a whole different gig.”
When Webb returned to Australia, however, he discovered there was no obvious pathway to the career he wanted.
Cutting was still in its infancy. Most of the country’s leading horse operations trained their own horses in-house and there were few opportunities for aspiring professional trainers to establish themselves.
Rather than force it, Webb stepped away from the industry, working in other fields while waiting for the sport to mature.
By the mid-1990s, that opportunity had arrived. Webb established his own training operation and began building a reputation as one of Australia’s leading cutting horse competitors and trainers.
Success followed, but one ride still stands above the rest and aboard Seligman Spin in a major Victorian final, everything clicked.
“This horse just told me he couldn’t be beat that night,” he said.
“It was almost like I was being levitated across the arena. I’ve had some good ones, but I’ve never had that same feeling again.”
Yet it wasn’t just success in the arena that has ultimately defined Webb’s career.
It was a clinic.
Asked to teach the cattle component of a horsemanship school, Webb found himself working with dozens of inexperienced riders. He arrived nervous, unsure whether he could teach what had become second nature.
At the end of the weekend, the organiser pulled him aside.
“You’re born to do this.”
He returned home to his wife Jillian and said, “We’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“I still wanted to be a cutting horse trainer and competitor, but I realised if we were going to grow the industry we had to teach people how to do it. We had to start at the grassroots and bring people through the system.”
That philosophy became the foundation of Webb’s operation near Illabo, which has evolved into one of Australia’s leading centres for cutting horse training, rider development and grassroots competition.
There, riders of all ages learn the fundamentals of cutting and cow horse work through clinics, individual coaching and practice competitions designed to mirror the real thing.
Many newcomers take their first rides on Webb’s own experienced cutting horses before progressing to training and competing with horses of their own.
He says there’s no greater satisfaction than watching that journey unfold.
At last month’s futurity, Webb watched two young riders he’s mentored for several years compete on one of the sport’s biggest stages.
For the first time, he realised they no longer needed his guidance.
“My mouth’s about to open [to guide them] and it’s already happening,” he says.
“They’re in front of my words. They’re reading what’s happening. For young girls to absorb that is quite exciting.”
Webb believes those moments are proof Australian cutting has a bright future.
He sees it not only in the next generation of riders, but in the growing demand for clinics at Illabo, which have expanded from a day and a half to three days as more people discover the sport.
“Our base is getting bigger and bigger,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of making it accessible. A lot of people have no idea where the entry level is, who to talk to or where to go.”
For Richard Webb, the Heritage Hall of Fame recognises a lifetime in the sport.
But if there’s one place he’d rather be, it’s still on the back fence, watching the next generation think for themselves.
Original Article published by Edwina Mason on About Regional.
