Champions built one pull at a time
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Prince George family celebrates another Calgary Stampede triumph while preserving a way of life
Winning at the Calgary Stampede is something most people in the draft horse world spend a lifetime chasing. This summer, Zane and Diane Pickering found themselves back at the top once again after winning the Lightweight class, another milestone for a Prince George family that's spent years building one of the strongest draft horse programs in the country.
The Prince George family once again found themselves standing atop one of the biggest stages in the draft horse world after capturing the Middleweight Heavy Horse Pull title at the Calgary Stampede, a competition many consider the pinnacle of the sport. It marked their second consecutive middleweight championship with team Stony and Bill while their heavyweight team came within just three-and-three-quarter inches of adding another title before settling for a heartbreaking, but incredibly impressive, second-place finish got the young green team Tonto and Tom.
For Pickering, the moment carried a little more emotion than simply hearing his name announced over the loudspeaker.
"We have great team, teamsters and crews and a good solid exercise/feed program and of course every season we see different challenges to try to make our horses more athletic and stronger than the year before based on what we see from past competitions," he said.
"When you do get there and you come ahead, it's a great sigh of relief, and a lot of fun and satisfaction to realize that your program was successful and has pushed the team to first spot.
While there are prestigious competitions throughout North America, Pickering says The Calgary Stampede stands in a class of its own.
"The Calgary Stampede is marked as the greatest show on Earth, and it has the top competition in the world year in and year out," he said.
"There are other world shows in north America that we do attend, but for a local show, there's nothing else like it. It's home, it's Canada and the best come here, so to be at home and to win at home is big to us."
As remarkable as the Calgary results were, they only told part of the story.
The Pickering’s travelled to St. Paul, Minnesota on the heels of the Stampede, where they competed against 35 of the world's best hitches at the 2026 World Percheron Congress. By week's end they had earned second place, finishing just behind another Canadian team and proving their program could compete with anyone on the continent.
When the dust finally settled, the family had gone head-to-head against 44 elite teams between Minnesota and Calgary, returning home with a first-place finish, a second-place finish, and yet another reminder that one of Canada's premier draft horse programs is quietly operating right here in northern British Columbia.
It's easy to admire the size and strength of six draft horses leaning into a load, but what spectators don't often see are the years spent getting to that point and capability to move together in groups as one.
A championship team isn't assembled overnight. Pickering explained that a successful group of horses can stay together for several years, provided they remain healthy, continue improving, and develop the chemistry needed to compete at the highest level. Every season brings new challenges, new adjustments, and another opportunity to make the horses just a little stronger than the year before.
The welfare of the horses remains the priority throughout the process, if one begins showing signs of strain, it comes out of the lineup and gets checked out. "We don't want to hurt the other horses," Pickering said simply.
Another thing many people don't realize is just how much weight these animals are capable of moving. Depending on the division, teams pull anywhere from roughly 12,000 pounds to over 13,000 pounds, often moving more than two and three times their own combined body weight through technique, training, and teamwork.
For Pickering, however, the biggest reward isn't measured in pounds or trophies, it’s measured in the horse handler people with him when the work finally pays off.
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