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July 29th, 2019

7/29/2019

Cheyenne Frontier Days 2019 Finals

The format for CFD had changed, due to the fact they have been covered by Cowboy Channel on television all nine days, with today, July 28th being the final.  They also have included Breakaway Calf Roping for the Women, which has been exciting and interesting to watch.  Interestingly, Justin McKee, Joe Beaver, and Donnie Gay have been in the Cowboy Channel offices in the Stockyards at Fort Worth, commentating on the events, cowboys & cowgirls at ‘work’ in Old Cheyenne.  It has been fun to watch as Cheyenne Frontier Days is such a historic rodeo and I’ve missed being there recently.

The CFD Announcer Andy Stewart, from Louisiana, was heard as well as the guys in Fort Worth and the coverage was great.  At CFD there is action going on at least two or three different places at one time and the cameramen were on target most of the time.

The new format is the scores today are the only ones counted for the winner, except in the Steer Roping event.

The Bareback Riding Results on Sunday are:
1st Place– Clayton Biglow of Clements, CA. with a score of 91; 2nd Place – Richmond Champion of The Woodlands, TX with 89.50; 3rd & 4th Place was a tie – Tilden Hooper of Carthage, TX and Will Lowe of Canyon, TX with scores of 87.50.  Steven Dent of Mullen NE was 5th with 85.50 and 6th was Pascal Isabelle of Okotoks, Canada.  7th was a tie with Tanner Aus of Granite Falls, MN and Kaycee Fields of Genola, UT with 84.00, 8th was Orin Larsen, of Inglis, Canada, had 83.00; Leighton Berry of Weatherford, TX had 81.50; Cole Reiner of Kaycee, WY had 77.50 and Garrett Shadbolt from Merriman, NE had a 72.00 score.

The Ladies Breakaway Roping Results on Sunday are:
1st Place was Jordan Jo Fabrizio (the assistant rodeo coach at West Texas A & M) with a 4.18 second time. 2nd Place was Chloe Frey of Eunice, Louisiana with 4.43 seconds; 3rd place was Kasey Eaves of Milan, NM with 4.49 seconds; 4th was Linsay Sumpter of Fowler, CO with a 4.66 second time.  Others were: Daysha Steadman of Georgetown, ID with 4.92; KL Spratt of Lysite, WY with 4.98; Ginalee Tierney of Broken Bow, NE with 4.99; Tiada Gray of Portales, NM with 5.02; Lari Dee Guy of Abilene, TX with 5.33 seconds; Jana Wiedman of Morrill, NE with 5.63 and Hagen Brunson of Hutchison, KS with 6.01 and Kelsie Chace of Cherokee, OK with 14.13.  Those with no time were: Rylea Fabrizio of Stephenville, TX, Taryn Sippel of Pierpont, SD, Brandi Hollenbeck of Moreland, OK and Hannah Lee of Durant, OK.

The winner, Jordan Jo Fabrizio got an Automatic Spot in the June 19th thru 21st, 2020, at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in New York City.

The Results of the Tie Down Roping for Sunday are:
1st Place – Seth Hall of Albuquerque, NM with 10.5 seconds; 2nd Place was Ryan Thibodeaux of Stephenville, TX with 10.8 seconds; 3rd was Austin Hurlburt of Norfolk, NE, (attending U of WY)  with 11.6 seconds; 4th Marcos Costa of Menard, TX with 11.7 seconds. Next was Shad Mayfield of Clovis, NM with 11.9 seconds; Tyler Thiel of Belle Fourche, SD with 13.4; Chase Williams of Stephenville, TX with 13.6; Tristan Mahoney of Florence, AZ with 16.5 seconds; Anthony Jordan (the only left-handed roper) with 16.7 seconds. Others who had no time were; Owen Wahlert of Grover, CO; Tyler Prcin of Alvord, TX; Cheyenne Stanley of Caddo, OK; Jason Schaffer of Broadus, MT; Clint Cooper of Decatur, TX; Stetson Vest of Childress, TX; and Raulie Hurtado, Jr. of Buhl, ID.

The Saddle Bronc Riding Results of Sunday are:
1st Place o Brodie Cress of Hillsdale, WY (3rd year in a row to win it) with a score of 87.50; 2nd, 3rd and 4th Place tied Sam Harper of Paradise Valley, NV; Jacobs Crawley of Boerne, TX and Wade Sundell of Boxholm, IA (who had a re-ride when his first bronc hit the fence and hurt Sundell’s leg but he rode the second bronc) – their scores were 86.  Mitch Pollock of Winnemucca, NV had 84.50; Jake Watson of Hudson Hope, BC, Canada and Alex Boore, of Axtel, UT scored 84s.  No scores went to J J Elshere of Hereford, SD; Sterling Crawley of Stephenville, TX; and Lefty Holman of Visalia, CA. Dawson Hay of Canada qualified for Sunday but was injured and could not compete.

The Team Roping Results of Sunday are:
1stPlace – Dustin Bird and Trey Yates with a 7.8 second time.  2nd Place was Brenten Hall & Chase Tryan with 9.3 seconds.  3rd Place was Jake Cooper and Caleb Anderson with 9.5 seconds.  4th Place was a tie between Pace Freed and Dustin Searcy and Dustin Eguquiza & Jake Long with 9.6 seconds.  Others in the race were: Peyton Holliday & Thomas Smith with 9.7; Coleman Proctor & Ryan Motes with 14.4; Chad Masters & Joseph Harrison, 14.6; Kelsey Parchman & Matt Kasner, 14.8; Garrett Tonozzi & Dustin Davis, 15.5; Austin Rogers & Nick Sartain, 18.7.  I didn’t get the score for Taylor Winn & Dylin Ahlstrom.  No times went to Garrett Rogers & Jake Minor; Cody Tew & Jerren Johnson; Caleb Driggers & Junior Nogueira; and Lane Ivy & Cesar de la Cruz.

The Steer Wrestling Results of Sunday are:
1stPlace – Eli Lord from Sturgis, SD with 6.9 seconds.  2ndP lace – Reed Kraeger from Elwood, NE with 8.7 seconds. 3rd Place – Del Ray Kraupie from Bridgeport, NE with 8.9 seconds.  4th Place – Trell Etbauer from Goodwell, OK with 9.2. Others in the competition that received penalties were; Riley Wakefield with 15.2 seconds; Kyle Calloway from Blue Creek, MT with 15.6 seconds; Joe Nelson of Alexander, ND with 16.6 seconds; Jason Tapley from Greenbrier, AR with 19.8 seconds; and Christian Pettigrew from Fort Sumner, NM with 21.2 seconds.  Having no time were Cyler Dowling of Newell, SD; Wyatt Linsay from Cuchillo, NM; Caden Camp of Belgrade, MT; Kyle Whitaker of Chambers, NE; Beau Clark of  Laramie, WY; and Carson Good of Long Valley, SD.  (I will add Carson Good grabbed that steer by the tail and held on while the steer ran around the arena for quite sometime before Good finally let go! What determination!

The Barrel Racing Results from Sunday are:
1st Place – Nellie Miller (who also won it last year) from Cottonwood, CA with 17.22 seconds. 2ndPlace – Shali Lord of Lamar, CO with 17.22.  (Although both gals had the same seconds, they went to their other two earlier runs at CFD and the one with the least seconds got 1st)  3rd Place – Megan Champion of Ukiah, CA with 17.24 seconds.  4th Place – Lacinda Rose, Willard MO with 17.53 seconds.  The rest by order – Brittany Pozzi Tonozzi of Victoria, TX with 17.56 seconds; Michelle Darling from Medford, OR with 17.59; Stevi Hillman from Weatherford, TX with 17.61;  Lisa Lockhart of Oelrichs, SD with 17.66;   Karson Bradley of Big Piney, WY with 17.74;  Dena Milner of Midland, TX with 17.94; Cheyenne Wimberley of Stephenville, TX with 17.98; and Kellie Collier of Hereford, TX with 22.69, the only one to knock over a barrel.

The Steer Roping Results was an Aggregate of their three runs and they are:
1st Place – Trey Sheets of Cheyenne, WY with a total of 45.6 seconds on 3 head.  2nd Place –Dan Fisher of Andrews, TX with a total of 49.6 seconds.  3rd Place -  J. Tom Fisher from Andrews, TX with a total of 49.9 seconds.  4th Place -  was Vin Fisher, Jr of Andrews, TX with a total of 51.3 seconds.  Others that made the finals and caught their steers were Marty Jones of Hobbs, NM,  and Roger Branch of Wellston, OK. Those with no time in the finals were; Will Gasperson of Decatur, TX; Troy Tillard of Douglas, WY; Steve Wolf, of Decatur, TX; Wade Shoemaker of Colorado State U; Jason Evans of Glen Rose, TX and Reo Lohse of Kaycee, WY.

How great for Sheets, the hometown guy to win, because if he hadn’t been there ALL the money in the Steer Roping would have probably gone to Andrews, TX!!

In the Over 50 Steer Roping Marty Jones won.  I have no other information.

The Bull Riding Results from Sunday are:
1st Place – Stetson Wright of Milford, UT with a score of 93.00.  (The first Wright in ProRodeo to win at CFD – and of all events, in Bull Riding!!)  2nd Place – Parker McCown of Montgomery, TX with a 90 score.  3rd   Place - was Ruger Piva of Challis, ID, with an 87 score.  4th Place – went to Nic Lica of Garden City, Michigan, with 85.50.  Joseph McConnell of Bloomfield, NM had a score of 84.50.  All other bull riding competitors bucked off, they were; Toby Collins of Stephenville, TX; Tristan Mize of Bryan, TX; Matt Palmer of Claremore, OK; Trey Benton III of Rock Island, TX; Garrett Smith of Rexburg, ID and Clayton Sellars of Fruitland Park, FL.

Stetson Wright, age 19, was the All-Around Champ of CFD.  It was a great rodeo, as it has been for the last 123 years.  Jim Hirsig is President of CFD, and with 3,000 volunteers they hold a great event.  Stace Smith was the stock contractor.  CHEYENNE FRONTIER DAYS – THE DADDY OF ‘EM ALL!

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July 08th, 2019

7/8/2019

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All-Around Rambo

As a rodeo historian I am always going through old magazines looking for information about rodeo and it’s cowboys and cowgirls.  I found this article written 70 years ago by Willard Porter, in Hoofs & Horns, (the main magazine about rodeo)  about Gene Rambo and thought it appropriate to share with my readers.

March, 1949.  Last fall, for the second consecutive time the San Francisco Cow Palace rodeo terminated the IRA Rodeo Season.  At this great show, with many top cowboys competing in the stiffest of competition, the winners of the IRA point award system were selected in the various events.  At the end of the rodeo it was found that young Gene Rambo was high-point man, having won first in the bareback bronc riding, second in bulldogging, third in saddle bronc riding and fourth in calf roping.  (FYI – IRA which stood for International Rodeo Association was the name the Rodeo Association of America and the National Rodeo Association chose after merging.  It is in no way connected to the IRA which has become the IPRA of today.)

It was also found, to no one’s immediate surprise, that Gene had won himself the title of World’s All-Around Champion Cowboy for 1948, a title that he had held previously in 1946.

No, it was not a surprise, but it was a little remarkable.  For early in 1948 Gene broke his ankle when a jeep turned over with him in the hills of his ranch.  He was, of course, disabled for some time and his rodeoing was delayed until the end of April when he made the Saugus, California, show.  Because of this he missed the big Denver and Ft. Worth rodeos and several smaller ones belonging to the IRA, which makes his feat of accumulating 8,364 points quite extraordinary.

Hitting his stride about the middle of May.  Gene won the saddle bronc riding contest at Bakersfield, California.  In June at the Salinas rodeo, Gene was the highest paid contestant, drawing down in winnings about $2,700.  He won the team roping event there with Marion Vincent of Porterville, California, placed third on bareback broncs and was fourth in bulldogging.  At St. Paul, Oregon (he has won the all-around here three times in a row), he scored first place in two events – calf roping and bareback bronc riding.

Toward the end of July when the Cheyenne show rolled around, Gene was high on the IRA point list.  There again he proved his sensational versatility in the arena by winning the show championship against the best rodeo talent in the business. He won out in the calf roping over Toots Mansfield by two-tenths of a second, tying his three calves in 47.2 and pocketing $1,220 for that effort.  Then Rambo went on to win the bareback bronc riding and placed second, by only two-tenths of a second, to Homer Pettigrew in the bulldogging.

Soon after Cheyenne Gene went to the top of the point award list and stayed there until the end of the season.

Currently, Gene Rambo is one of the most proficient all-around cowboys the Western states have ever produced.  He has been contesting professionally now for over ten years, and there isn’t a contest or event in the books that he has not tried at one time or another.  He busts steers nearly as well as he ropes calves.  Brahman bulls, too, were once Gene’s best doin’s and he won a lot of money topping the tough beef.

John Bowman, that old veteran of rodeo, recently said of Gene:  “He’s the greatest hand there is today or ever has been before.  He’s tops; you can’t beat him as an all-around cowboy.”

Don McMillan, lifelong friend of Gene’s who lives near his home, has said: “Naturally, we who have seen Gene grow up from a mean little devil, who had to be boosted on to the horse he was riding, think he’s the greatest all-around cowboy (which is what a cowboy is suppose to be after all) who ever worked in the arena.”

Gene Rambo was born in San Miguel, California, on June 12, 1920.  He now makes his home at Shandon, where he has been since he was eleven years old. Before that time, however, the Rambo family lived on the Wayland Cattle Ranch in Stone Canyon district in Monterey County.  Gene’s dad was foreman of the ranch and a good bronc rider and horse breaker.  He taught Gene the art so well the boy was breaking colts when he was only seven years old.  Yes, he was getting bucked off, too.

“Besides riding horses,” Don McMillan says, “Gene’s favorite pastime then was making life miserable for any poor, tired cowboy who dropped in at the Wayland Ranch.”

At Shandon said Gene was a great high school athlete and when he left school in his sophomore year he turned his athletic ability toward rodeo.  His first win was at Prescott, Arizona, in 1938, where he placed in the bronc riding. Around this time the famous John Schneider, a great all-around cowboy himself in the early 1930’s taught Gene the tricks of bull and bareback bronc riding.

For a man who has contested in every event for some ten years you would expect Gene to be pretty beaten up, but, although he has had some bad knocks, he has never  been seriously hurt.

Despite various injuries Gene has managed to stay aboard the best bucking mounts for the allotted time during the past few years. In 1942 he rode Bob Barmby’s “PDQ” at Willits, California.  At the Cow Palace in 1946 he rode Harry Rowell’s ‘Scene Shifter’ and Rowell’s ‘Major Lou’ at the Palace last year.  He had also ridden ‘Scene Shifter’ once before at Livermore, California.  Verne Elliott’s ‘Ham What Am’ has felt the Rambo spurs for ten seconds, and so have Andy Jauregui’s ‘Will James’ and Joe Kelsey’s head-slinging six year old ‘Snake’ the horse that Gene conquered at Pendleton last year.

Gene thinks his toughest ride was on a horse of Doc Sorensen’s named ‘Fox’ last year at Ogden, Utah.  The horse reputedly had never been ridden for two years, but Gene made a spectacular ride on him until the whistle blew.  Gene admitted later that his “‘luck worked out just right.”

In 1947 Gene won most of his points in the roping events on one of his good mounts, ‘Nita’, a registered Quarter horse mare our of RO stock.  Nita is a bay, weighs 1,100 pounds and stands 14.2 hands.  One of the fastest times Gene ever wrapped up a calf was on Nita at Salt Lake City in 1945.  After Gene had done the job the stop watches read 11.2.

Gene’s other crack roping horse, on which he won most of his roping points last year, is ‘Jess’, a seven year-old Oklahoma Star gelding.  Also a bay, this mount weighs about the same as Nita and is a little taller.  Roping on  Jess last year, Gene tied a calf down at Pendleton in 13.4.  He used this horse for his roping win at Cheyenne when he beat Toots (Mansfield) in 1948.

To win the ’48 crown of cowboy contestants Gene traveled about 30,000 miles and entered more than 30 Western contests. He won about $20,000 last year and you can bet a lot of it is being banked for those two kids of his – a girl, five years old and a three month-old boy.

Gene stands five feet, ten inches and weighs 180. He is hard as a rock and stays in perfect shape.  According to McMillan, he has an amazing amount of energy which seems to stay with him all the time.

“At Salt Lake City in 1947,” says McMillan, “Gene was riding a wild bareback bronc that plunged headlong into the arena fence just at the whistle.  The horse bounced back, dead as a gutted jack-rabbit, leaving Gene hanging on the top of the fence badly bruised and shirtless.  Despite these bruises and a deep wound in the palm of his hand, Gene went on to work in three events that afternoon and three that night.  Then he sat around until 2 a.m. to be paid off, took a shower, loaded his horse and drove to Cheyenne, a distance of 480 miles. I was with him during all of this and it liked to wore me out just watching him.”

Gene owns two good-sized ranches, one in Cholame Valley and the other on Castle Mountain in Monterey County, which he operates and works when he’s not rodeoing.  Bill Linderman once said that Gene nearly worked him to skin and bone when he was visiting him on one of the ranches.

A modest, easy-going fellow, Gene is well-liked by the rodeo gang and praised by rodeo fans.  He has undoubtedly won more fame and money than anyone his age in the rodeo game, but try to get him to talk about his exploits in the arena!

McMillan says, “In 1947 I got LOOK magazine to send a man to Cheyenne to write a picture story on Gene at the show there.  Well, the big lug was so hard to do anything with that LOOK finally gave up.  But he is one of the squarest shooters and best fellows to travel around with that I ever knew.”

Gene Rambo has been said by many a cowboy to have been the most versatile All-Around Cowboy of any generation.  Rambo’s name is not in the PRCA Media Book as a Champion in any event, but has been inducted in to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame as an All-Around, and in the Rodeo Historical Rodeo Hall of Fame in the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, which is proof enough of his abilities in early day rodeo.  He won the IRA World Championships under the IRA rules.

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July 29th, 2019

July 08th, 2019

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