High River is home to a world champion.

Julie Moorcroft won a world title at a western dressage event in Oklahoma recently, calling it a life long dream.

"Many people are familiar with English Dressage which is what we see at the Olympics, western dressage is similar, it's just done in western tack and the criteria the judges are looking for is more aimed at cowboy heritage than English heritage," Moorcroft says. "The wonderful thing about the sport is that it's brought many, many people back to riding and competing that haven't done so for years and that's very exciting."

Moorcroft took two horses down and was a winner on a horse called Backtrax Gracie Grace In Gold, or known more affectionately as Gracie.

"Gracie was nothing short of amazing, she won a world championship, a reserve world championship and was top five and top ten of literally less than 51 rides," she says.

Her other horse, All About Bling was bred by Eva and Chris Smith near Turner Valley and is an older horse at 6 and came home with top five and top ten placing's in much tougher divisions.

Moorcroft says the divisions are set up in such a way that people can compete on their backyard horse and have a good chance of winning.

There were over 800 rides with many put on by American professions and Moorcroft says even to ribbon in classes like that is an honour.

She says it's a great sport for the whole family with young children competing as well as seniors on all types of horses and even a couple of mules.