The Livermore Rodeo, a.k.a. “The World’s Fastest Rodeo,” is kind of a big deal. The 2009 Rodeo was the 91st annual edition of the event, and we reasoned that anything that’s been going on that long must have some draw to it. And so having never been, we needed to check it out. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was cool.
First I surprised by the number of people there. The place was packed! Who knew a place so close to San Francisco/Oakland/Silicon Valley would have so many cowboys?
And second, the level of competition was impressive. I imagined there would be some local cowboys showing their skills, but there were wranglers and riders from all over the country. Some were ranked in the top 10 in the world for their particular events.
There was calf-roping, wild cow-milking, bucking bronco riding, and finally bull riding. During the bronco event they would keep announcing the name of the rider and the name of the “bucking horse” but it sounded like they were saying something else that rhymes with “bucking.” Here’s a set of pictures (I didn’t take) that shows the horse winning one:
Ouch.
By the end of it we were learning some of the rules. For example, calf-roping is a timed event (the best times were sub 5-seconds!), but certain moves would earn you a penalty. If the guy in charge of roping the back legs only got one leg instead of both, that was a 5 second penalty –enough to put your team out of the running.
And for the bronco and bull-riding, if the rider lasted a full 8 seconds without falling off, then they would get a score from the judges based on degree of difficulty and maybe style points? The best one we saw was the very first bullrider. He made it look easy for his 8 seconds, then made a flying dismount, stuck the landing, and earned 90 points. I wonder what a 100-point ride looks like. Only like one other cowboy made it more than 4 seconds.
We took our neighbors so I’m sure Bryn will post pictures of the girls in their cute new cowgirl hats on their pony ride.
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Tags: california
