Meet DH Ranch Relay: New Team, Old Traditions

When the DH Ranch Relay team thunders into the ENMAX Relay Races at GMC Stadium during the 2026 Calgary Stampede, they’re carrying far more than speed and skill—they’re carrying generations of history, culture and family tradition.

Team Owner and Captain Brent Dodginghorse helped launch the DH Ranch Relay team in 2025, when they entered the Rotary International Relay Race qualifier on Stampede Park. The win there earned them a coveted spot at the 2025 Calgary Stampede. This was followed by strong results at other major relays, including at the Enoch Cree Nation in central Alberta and the Championship of Champions in Casper, Wyoming. Their finish as the top Treaty 7 team in Casper secured their return to the Stampede this year—a testament to how quickly this team has risen in the ranks of world-class relay racing.

“Relay racing isn’t just a sport,” Dodginghorse explains with pride. “Relay races are a traditional game that goes back more than 400 years, meant to bring people together to celebrate life, horses and horse culture.”

Dodginghorse, from Tsuut’ina Nation just outside Calgary, says relay racing is a way of reconnecting with a legacy that stretches back long before Treaty 7 was signed in 1877.

The Dodginghorse family’s relationship with the Calgary Stampede runs deep. Dodginghorse’s grandfather, Harry Dodginghorse, was the 1948 Calgary Stampede Champion Steer Rider, and members of the Tsuut’ina Nation competed in relay races at the first Stampede in 1912 and again in the 1960s. For the DH Ranch Relay team, returning to the arena at Stampede Park feels like a full-circle moment.

On the ground, DH Ranch Relay is a family-driven, youth-focused program. The team includes Rider Aiden Breast of Goodfish Lake, Alta., along with versatile crew members James Twoguns, of Tsuut’ina Nation, and Carter Wuttunee Fawbert, of Red Pheasant Cree Nation, Sask. Twoguns and Wuttunee Fawbert rotate between the roles of Setter — responsible for preparing the next horse — and Catcher, the person who receives the incoming horse. As Team Leader, Dodginghorse also serves as the Back Holder, managing the third horse, while another family member, Ryley Dodginghorse, is a team alternate.

Around them is a larger camp of family and youth — sometimes eight to 10 people travelling together,who help feed, cool down and exercise the horses as part of what Dodginghorse describes as a “classroom in the dirt,” a program that has involved dozens of young people.

For fans in the grandstand, relay may look like unfiltered excitement, and it is. “Watching relay racing is watching Indigenous poetry in motion,” says Dodginghorse. “Getting to race in front of thousands of fans at the Calgary Stampede is an adrenaline rush incomparable to anything. It gives you feelings of pride, of excitement and enjoyment.”