Addicted to it: Alona James Sets Arena Record, Wins Pink Buckle Derby on XF Tres Of Heroine

Alona James and XF Tres Of Heroine won the 2026 Pink Buckle Derby at the Lazy E Arena in Guthrie, Okla., setting the arena’s standard-pattern record of 16.446 on the way to a 33.081 average and $86,580 for owner Robin Weaver.

A lot of people were surprised by that record. James wasn’t one of them.

“I kind of wanted to say this to Amy Wilson (on the EQN SportsDesk) the other day, but I don’t want to sound boastful,” James admitted. “But honestly, her setting that arena record is no surprise to me whatsoever. I know how fast she is.”

XF Tres Of Heroine (Tres Seis x BP Mariahs Heroine x Valiant Hero), a 6-year-old bay mare James calls Junkie, was second in Round 1 on 16.635 for $16,380, 0.062 off Get Tha Goody and Steely Steiner. The record came in Round 2 on Oct. 5, 0.052 faster than Goodbye Sophie and Kassie Mowry, and paid $23,400. The 1D average was worth $46,800, with Dashing Olie and Emily Beisel 0.345 back in second. Tres Seis and breeders Larry Morehead and Xcel Farms of Asher, Okla., earned $10,823 apiece from the Derby.

Those same two runs counted in the Pink Buckle Open, where Junkie was second in Round 1 for $7,700, won Round 2 for $11,000 and won the 1D average for $22,000. That’s another $40,700 for Weaver and $127,280 on the week, plus $5,088 more each to Tres Seis and the breeders.

“This mare deserves a big win like this because she is very special to us,” James said. “And she tries hard. She really does. She gives it her all every time you run her.”

Racetrack kids

Both of them came up on the track.

James was raised on the backside of Fairmount Park outside St. Louis, where her parents groomed, galloped, outrode and worked the starting gate, with a few barrel horses on the side. Weaver bought Junkie as a long yearling at the BFA sale while shopping for Tres Seis mares, and the mare raced as a 2-year-old, earning close to $30,000 by James’ count. James has had her since that fall.

The racing shows up at the end of every run.

“From running on the track, she knows how to run out of the arena,” James explained. “You’ll sit there and see a lot of horses and you’re like, ‘Man, that was a nice run,’ and they just slow down running home. They don’t carry their speed all the way back through the timer.”

Junkie carries hers so far past the timer that stopping is its own project.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa’ when we got down there to stop,” James said.

The motor is running long before the first barrel, too.

“When I’m going down the alley, she is pulling my arms off. She wants to take off,” James said. “And she’s always been that way. She has forward motion. Her motor runs nonstop. She’s always on the go and she’s going somewhere. That’s her.”

Her own boss

Away from the pattern, Junkie is not a pet.

“She is a character,” James said. “She really doesn’t like to be petted. She’s kind of mean sometimes. She will bite you.”

She doesn’t want much help on the pattern, either.

“She’s always been a little stiffer style,” James described. “She does not like you to pull on her. She likes to be the boss. So I just try to get along with her.”

James figures the racetrack is why they get along.

“I don’t know that she would fit a lot of people, but she fits me,” James said. “Just being around the racetrack so much, you do learn how to get along or deal with some of the racehorse quirks. I do really like mares and I can get along with a quirky mare really good, even though me and them might have a fight or two and then we’re good. Most of my high money earning horses have been mares, which is crazy.”

The two-handed first barrel people kept asking about all week came from home.

“I’ve rode two-handed like that since I was little,” James recalled. “My dad, he rode so many colts and broke young horses that I guess I watched him and kind of just mimicked him so much that I just do it. It’s muscle memory and I honestly don’t even think about it. I know that sounds weird, but I really don’t. It just happens.”

“Who is Alona James?”

After the record, plenty of newer fans were asking who she was. James gets it.

“There is probably a lot of the new coming people that don’t know me, because I’ve been barrel racing my whole life and been doing futurities for a long, long time,” she said. “But I can see where people wouldn’t know who the heck I am.”

Out of high school she skipped college to ride horses for the public, and in 2002 she moved from Mount Vernon, Ill., to Ada, Okla. Between 2000 and 2007 she won the Old Fort Days Futurity in Fort Smith, Ark., in 2005, placed second there in 2002 and won the slot race at the BFA. But her accomplishment list could go on for days.

Rare Bugs Alive, a horse she trained and ran through his futurity and derby years, later carried Emily Beisel in college rodeo and beyond, prior to her NFR career kicking off. That’s just one name of many. She also started dozens of horses that went on to be big winners in the sport.

“I laugh about it and I say this jokingly, but this was like the Stone Age when stuff was just in magazines,” James said. “I had a horse who in 2003 won $85,000, which nowadays would probably be 300. There were no incentives, no nothing back then. We ran at different money.”

Around 2007, burnt out, she stepped away to train racehorses. A Furyofthewind mare named Little Miss Honky Tonk brought her back in 2015 and made the Fort Smith finals all three years.

“That kind of got me like, ‘Oh, I miss this. I got to go back to running barrels,’” James said.

She won Fort Smith again in 2019.

“I don’t know if I should have stayed out of it as long as I did,” she admitted. “But it’s what I always love to do. I love running barrels, just love it. The break didn’t hurt me for sure at all. When I did come back, there was a bunch of new faces that have no idea. I’m just like, ‘Yeah, I’m an old timer here. Don’t worry about me. Been here, done this my whole life.’”

Fresh and ready

Junkie’s first competitive run, in the BFA Juvenile, didn’t make it around the pattern.

“We run in there, turn the first barrel good, go to the second,” James recalled. “My chin strap broke at the second barrel and Junkie takes me right back to the gate. We didn’t even make the pattern.”

James kept at it.

“I knew she had so much talent in there,” she said. “You just got to get it out.”

Getting it out, for James, means not running it out of her. Junkie doesn’t get exhibitioned, and between the Breeders Challenge and the Pink Buckle she didn’t run at all.

“I felt like she didn’t need to run,” James explained. “I wanted her rested and ready to go, and it worked. She knows her job. I do not like to overrun her, and I feel like when she’s fresh and ready, she runs her best. A lot of people were asking me, ‘I can’t believe you’re not going to run down here.’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not.’”

Derby days looked a lot like a local jackpot.

“Sunday, hauled her up there, tied her to the horse trailer, just like we were at a little local $25 jackpot, and saddled her, warmed her up, went and made my run, pulled her out, gave her a bath and took her home,” James said. “And then hauled her right back up there Monday, did the same exact thing. She does good like that, and I know that about her.”

The Robin Weaver Connection

“I’m very grateful for Robin Weaver for allowing me to be her person and jockey her and keep her all this time,” James said. “Robin is the greatest. She understands the game.”

Weaver later bought the mare’s dam, BP Mariahs Heroine, and is breeding Junkie to her stallion, RR Mistakelly.

“So yeah, the future looks fun,” James said.

Behind James in the Derby average, Dashing Olie and Beisel were second on 33.426 for $32,760, Force The Goodbye and Mowry were third on 33.546 for $25,740, AM Regina George and Carlee Otero were fourth on 33.646 for $22,230, and PT Love Tobea Blazin and Marne Loosenort were fifth on 33.683 for $16,380. HP Hotrod and Sherry Cervi won the 2D average on 34.586 for $19,200. James also placed in the Young Guns League Futurity on SS Iza Storm, ninth in Round 2 on 17.180 for $990 and 12th in the average on 34.732 for $1,254. For full results, visit pinkbuckle.com.

“Thanks to Pink Buckle for allowing us to run for this kind of money,” James said. “It sure makes a difference in all of us trainers and people that just can do it on the weekends. It really helps.”

All week at the Lazy E, the old guard came out for her. Plenty of them, names at the top of the sport, ran to the fence to watch her go.

“I’ve known them my whole life,” she said. “I did get out of it there for a little while and they all kept going for the most part. But no, it is cool. It’s definitely been a week of my life to remember, that’s for sure.”

And she already knew how she’d spend the first night of it.

“I’m sure I’ll lay down in bed and won’t be able to go to sleep tonight and just keep watching it,” James said.