The Wild World of Rodeo (2382)

The wild world of rodeo is a unique American sport that unites the glamour of the 21st century professional athletics with the spirit of the Old West, when cowboys tamed with horses and herded thousands of heads of cattle on the open plains. Those cowboys held competitions to see who was best at such things as calf roping and bull riding. Those friendly contests have grown into the professional sport of rodeo.

The word rodeo comes from the Spanish rodear, meaning to encircle or surround. The first rodeo event is supposed to be held in the town of Prescott, Arizona, in 1888. Over the next few decades, a number of other western towns launched rodeo events. The largest events have parades and musical entertainment, grandstand shows, fireworks, carnival rides, western art shows and aerial demonstrations by Air Force fighter jets.

Classic rodeo includes seven competitive events, divided into rough stock events and timed events. The rough stock events are the following. The Bareback bronk riding requires the cowboy to ride a wild unsaddled horse for eight seconds, holding on with just one hand to a handhold similar to a leather suitcase handle. In the bull riding, the most dangerous of rodeo events, the cowboy must stay on a wildly bucking 2000-pound bull for eight seconds. As in the bareback bronk event, he may use only one hand to hold on, in this case to a rope wrapped around the bull's chest. The saddle bronk riding also requires the rider to synchronize his spurring actions to the animals bucking movements. Using just one hand to hold onto a thick rein, the cowboy must try to stay firmly in the saddle.

Timed events, in which the contestant tries to complete a task in the fastest time, include steer wrestling, calf roping, team roping and barrel racing. The steer wrestling is an event that requires great speed, strength and precision. With the help of a "hazer" who keeps the steer running in the right direction, the contestant jumps from a horse running 30 miles per hour, reach­es for the steer's horns, slides him to a stop and wrestles him to the ground. In the calf roping a cowboy on horse-back chases a calf and throws a looped rope over its head. The cowboy then dismounts, lays the calf on its side and ties any three of its legs together. The team roping requires precise timing of the actions of two people: the header, who ropes a steer around its horns or neck, and the heeler, who rides in and ropes the steer's hind legs. The goal of the only female event in professional rodeo, the barrel racing, is to ride a horse as quickly as possible around three barrels arranged in a cloverleaf pattern.

Besides the cowboys and cowgirls who compete, the most important are the rodeo clowns and bullfighters who often entertain the audience between events but whose real job is to distract angry bulls and lure them away from cowboys on the ground.

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