A farmhouse burns against the East Texas night as a terrified horse races through the smoke. Through the flames, a man's voice calls: “Run, Martha! Run!” Martha Josey awakens inside a camper at the 1980 National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, about to make one of the most important runs of her life. With her husband, champion calf roper R.E. Josey, at her side, Martha enters the arena with a world championship hanging in the balance. Her horse, Sonny, nearly goes down at the first barrel, but Martha refuses to let up. She races for the timer and wins. At forty, Martha Josey has reached the top of the rodeo world.
Back home at the Josey Ranch, Martha and R.E. return to training horses and teaching young riders. During the filming of an instructional video, a young horse suddenly spooks and throws Martha violently to the ground. Her pelvis and shoulder are broken, and doctors tell the world champion she may never walk again, much less ride. Confined to a wheelchair and facing the possible loss of everything she and R.E. have built, Martha is taken back to the girl she once was: a daddy's girl who lost her father at ten, watched her mother sell their horses just to survive, and at seventeen lost nearly everything again when her grandmother's home burned to the ground. All she had left was one horse, her father's old roping saddle and a dream. From a rusty barrel in East Texas begins a journey through the beginnings of women's barrel racing, to the horse that changes her life, the cowboy who becomes her husband, and ultimately the biggest arenas in rodeo.
Now, after fighting her entire life to get there, Martha faces the possibility it could all be over. With R.E. beside her, she endures months of painful rehabilitation, determined that doctors don't get to write the ending of her story. Four months after being told she might never walk again, Martha climbs back onto a horse. Then she returns to competition. She wins her first rodeo back and, despite missing much of the season, fights her way back to the National Finals Rodeo. Seven years later, her remarkable journey carries her to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, where she rides for the United States in an international rodeo exhibition. On the world stage, Martha Josey does what she has done all her life. She runs to win. RUNNING TO WIN is the remarkable true story of Martha Josey and the man who stood beside her, a woman who learned long before becoming a champion that life can knock you down, take everything you have, and leave you with a choice: stay down... or run.**
