The Rodeo Cowboy

The rodeo cowboy is a contrary sort of man. He lives to ride, loves to win, won't be regimented, and if he's competing hard, hasn't got time to stay in one place for more than a day or two. A saddle bronc rider bursts out of the chute for a hair-rais ing eight-second ride at Scotts dale's Parada Del Sol. Strength, experience, and a keen knowl edge of horseflesh are necessary for a rider to stay atop the hurri cane deck of 1500 pounds of twisting, jolting fury. Jeff Kida

Rodeo... beauty queens and barrel racers, steer wrestlers and team ropers, bull riders and clowns, they're all part of that colorful, fast-moving, and often dangerous sport which each year continues to draw huge, cheering crowds to Arizona's big-time rodeo events, like Prescott's Frontier Days, Scottsdale's Parada Del Sol, The Payson Rodeo, Tucson's Fiesta De Los Vaqueros, and Phoenix' Rodeo of Rodeos. Color, excitement, old world charm, and loads of tradition pervade the Mexican Charro Rodeo. The Charros (cowboys) have their own federation, begun in 1933, and over a half-million active members in the U.S. and Mexico. Their principal function, aside from rodeo events, is the preservation of the traditions of the cowboy and the customs of Old Mexico. (Far left) A salute begins each rodeo celebration. (Left, center) Gumaro Sosa is president of the Association of Charros in Phoenix. His traditional dress includes collarless shirt, colorful tie, pegged pants, sombrero, vest, and heavy rowelled spurs. Lisa Smith, below, is ambassadress of the Charros in Arizona. Ladies participate in Charro rodeos but only in riding exhibitions and always sidesaddle. (Left) Hand-tooled saddles with heavy silver ornamentation are very much a prized part of Charro equipage. (Left, bottom) One of many events unique to Charro rodeo is the "pulling of the tail," which involves a high-speed chase and intricate maneuvering to throw the animal. Other events include wild horse riding, bull riding, and trick riding exhibitions.

Photos by Ken Akers At home he may work on a ranch or in construction or even in some city job. Or he may devote his life to the game, going to 100 or more rodeos a year, sleeping in motels and cars, suffering broken bones or wounded pride, finishing out of the money for days on end, and then coming up with $1500 in sweet bills. Usually young in body and always youthful in spirit, these knights of the corral play out their hearts and guts in the long, long string of over 600 American rodeos that some call "the Suicide Circuit."

Story by Dan McGowan Sketches by Murray Tinkelman Rodeo Cowboy from page 28

Somewhere back in the late 1800s, along the lonely cattle trails and at the end of long drives, cowboys were fond of tossing dollars into a hat as a prize for whoever could stay longest on a mean bronc or bull. When people started coming around to watch, promoters picked up on the idea, and a new sport sprouted on the American scene.

In 1936, after years of depending solely on promoters for prize money, a group of 68 cowboys formed the Cowboy Turtles Association - "It took us a long time to get started, but we finally stuck our necks out" to bring some order to the game.

The CTA provided the organization to increase prize money and bring more fairness to the rules, and it grew into today's Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which has about 4000 members.

It's a grueling game, this rodeo. Cowboys have no team doctors or trainers, and when they get hurt they treat themselves often on the way to another rodeo. Even if a rider gives in and calls a doctor, the medical attention will commonly be administered in a motel room, on an airplane, or behind the chutes where the animals are prepared for riding.

"It's the original school of hard knocks," five-time world bareback champion Joe Alexander once said. "There are a lot of cowboys that can rope and ride, but there are a much smaller percentage who can stand the pace and still win."

Alexander's specialty makes use of one of the most ornery animals in creation the bucking horse. This creature is a misfit in the horse world, a rebellious cuss who has soured under the saddle and who would rather be hog-tied than ridden. With a rolling motion powerful as dynamite and unpredictable as lightning, the horse will pull every trick he knows to dislodge his clinging rider.

Even in the bucking chute - a narrow stall that opens directly onto the rodeo arena and acts as a sort of "green room" for animal and rider such a horse can be dangerous. He could rear in anger and fall on the cowboy before he gets out of the chute. Or he could demonstrate pure meanness and lean sideways in the chute, pinning the cowboy's leg and causing a lot of pain.

But bronc riding is a gentle art compared with the sport of riding bulls, which some say is the world's most dangerous event. Nostrils flared and ears extended like semaphores, your average crossbred Brahma bull is 2500 pounds of muscle and meanness. He'll do whatever he can to throw a cowboy off his back, and likely as not will charge him afterward with an ambition to do real harm. Bucked off in the dirt and choking with dust, the bull rider hasn't got time to nurse his wounded pride; he's up, running, and over the fence before the bull makes him a victim.

Sometimes a cowboy needs help escaping a bull, and that's where the rodeo clown comes in. This fellow dresses for laughs in baggy pants, polka-dot shirt and cleated baseball shoes. But his aim is dead serious: preventing serious injury or death.

The clown is a combination gymnast and bullfighter. He will egg the bull on at close range, then run like a rabbit to escape the Brahma brute, sprinting aside just in time to keep from getting hit. Or he may work with a reinforcedbarrel, using it to distract the bull or climbing inside it for protection when the animal decides to charge.

Occasionally an unlucky clown will get trampled and hurt by a four-legged pursuer. He goes off to mend but is almost always back again. He seldom, very seldom gives up.

The rodeo game gets more popular and more profitable all the time, and the rodeo cowboy is changing as it does. Today's winner is more competitive, and some say better, than the champions before him. He may or may not have ever worked on a ranch, he might drink or he might be an abstainer, he may be single or married, white, black or brown, dead-serious or clownish, but one thing's for sure: he's tough. He has to be.

When he's not riding bareback, Dan O'Haco is down in Tucson doing a coffee commercial. Or plugging blue jeans. Or trussed up in a "fat suit" to play stunt man to a 300-pound actor in a Western that nobody's seen yet.

"I'm drifting towards acting, but to get in there, I have to take stunts and wrangle and whatever I can do," says the darkly handsome rider, who vaguely resembles Charles Bronson.

O'Haco comes to the screen with a rodeo record as impressive as any cowman's son could hope to muster. Considered world class, he qualified for the 1979 National Finals, where he took $3500, and his career earnings total more than $60,000.

He was born in Winslow, Arizona, grew up on a 64,000 acre ranch nearby and remembers watching his brother, Mike, ride the local arena.

"We used to have a rodeo in Holbrook every year on the Fourth of July, a big deal, and my brother was about 14 or 15 and he used to go. So I told my dad I wanted to ride and he said,, 'Next year, when you're eight.' "So I got into calf

ridin' and that was the first time I ever did it. And I've been hooked ever since."

From that very young entry O'Haco went to riding steers, then tried bulls in high school and college. "I was a pretty good bull rider, but then I seen everybody riding these barebacks. And it looked pretty easy to me, so I tried it. And it came really natural to me. I didn't even have to work at it. I figured this is my event, right here."

Unlike most rodeo events, bareback riding didn't evolve from anything practical. It was born on a bet, a result of the daredevil instinct of cowhands challenging the impossible.

A bareback rider uses next to nothing in equipment. His link to the horse consists of a "rigging," a narrow piece of leather with a handhold, cinched around the horse just back of the withers. The handhold is about the size of a suitcase handle, and the cowboy must hang onto it with only one hand and let the other arm flap freely; if he touches the horse or himself with his free hand, he's disqualified.

"It takes a strong forearm to grip it," says O'Haco. "And you learn to work your feet so it takes all of the strain out of your hand."

For eight seconds the bronc kicks, twists, and dances, trying his mightiest to throw the rider into the dirt. The cowboy who expects to win must keep encouraging the bronc with frequent use of his dull spurs, for both the horse and the rider are judged on performance. To the spectator in the crowd, the ride seems to go by too fast to allow for any thought but the wheels in the cowboy's head are always turning.

"Yeah, you think," says O'Haco. "When you're first a beginner, you have a hard time thinkin' because you've got so much adrenalin going through ya, you can't recollect things. But now it seems like I'm thinkin' all the time. I think, well, I know where the judges are, and which way my horse is going, and so I know which leg to move more. You react to the animal, but yet you're trying to ride for the judge, see, that's the main man.

"So you always have him in the back of your mind, where his position is. And then you can't do anything wrong, 'cause he'll sure pick it up.

"Sometimes you cheat 'em, see. The horse'll be turning like this, and the judges'll be on the other side, and they can't see your other leg. So it don't make no difference what that other leg is doing, it's this one they're watching. So you do it all with that one leg, and they think, boy, you're making a heck of a ride."

Getting "hung up" caught in the rigging and unable to dismount is one of the most dangerous and painful things that can happen to a bronc rider. O'Haco knows from experience.

"I got hung up one time in Casper, Wyoming. And that horse beat me around the arena for about five minutes, and when I got off I was nothin' but black and blue. I didn't have any broken bones, luckily."

Hard to imagine, he says he didn't panic. "I couldn't do anything about it, I just had to go with the flow. And eventually the horse slowed down enough to where I could jump back on. That's the only way I got out of there."

Nowadays O'Haco is about ready to get out of rodeo, too. "I don't want to rodeo full-time as a career much longer; I'd like to get into acting as a full-time deal because it pays better. I still like to rodeo, but I don't like to travel as much as I used to. I've been traveling now for eight years, and I've seen the towns over and over and over again. The year I went to the finals, which was the year before last, I went to about a hundred rodeos. I think I need some new stimuli."

For O'Haco, those stimuli would be some good, solid acting roles withmoney to match. And, maybe after some fat years in show business, he'll return to the life he came from.

"Someday, if I ever make it big in the movie industry, and I got a million dollars, I'm gonna buy a ranch. Someday I'd like to get back into ranching one way or another."

Larry Mahan is the consummate rodeo rider. In his 18 years as a professional, he's ridden, bucked, and bulled his way through a legion of dusty arenas and a million miles of highway.

And all he's got to show for it is six world titles, a lifetime of fame, a few movie credits, his own clothes company, a 40-acre farm in Scottsdale, and a pretty lady by his side.

"The game was good to me," says the 37-year-old Mahan, still trim and as graceful and good-looking as a New York model in a Levi's ad. "I happened to come along at a time when the game was getting hot, and I happened to be in the riding events, which are probably more glamorous than the timed events, and more writers and reporters happened to jump on that part of it. So here I am."

He's the six-time winner of the World All-Around cowboy title of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, a record that has only been equalled one other time. During his heavily competitive days, about 10-years back, he qualified a nearly unbelievable 26 times for events in the National Finals Rodeo, which is the Indianapolis 500 of the riding and roping circuit. Sometimes he qualified for three final events at once and made things sing in saddle bronc, bareback, and bull riding.

These days "Bull" Mahan is semiretired like football players, ridingevent cowboys often bow out early but that doesn't stop him from climbing onto a mean animal once in a while for a good old-fashioned hell-raise. Bound for El Paso, Texas, recently, on a business trip, he entered the bronc-riding event at a rodeo there just for the thrill.

"I enjoy riding broncs. I quit last year and said I was gonna hang it up, and I did. But I decided that I still gotta do it again at times.

"Everybody's in the same game, and the game is survival, and you really don't have to worry about your competitor as long as you do your job. The bottom line is, it's up to the individual and how they do their job."

Doing your job the best you can, on your own, on a temperamental animal, in front of a yelling crowd with the announcer rattling away over the loudspeaker and the judges watching every move you make like hungry hawks, you've got no one else to depend on and no one else to blame. It's the rodeo cowboy's way.

Mahan looks back on those days with undisguised delight. He was a wonder back then, an up-and-coming kid who rode rodeo like it'd never been ridden before.

Growing up in Brooks, Oregon, he rode anything with four legs on it and won his first buckle in a junior rodeo at the age of 12. Later, moving to Arizona, Mahan became the state's 1962 All-Around champ in high school, and a year later he turned pro. In 1965 he took the world title in bull riding and repeated that feat two years later. Then came the string of superlative titles: PRCA World All-Around in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1973. His career earnings total more than $500,000.

They say Larry Mahan transformed the sport of rodeo, took it from backpasture entertainment to high-paying, crowd-pleasing show biz.

Mahan is modest when he hears that. "I'm not gonna take credit for that. The game was good to me, and I had a chance to repay it in different ways, but I don't think any one individual can say that he took the game from point A to point B.

"I think more people became aware of it being a sport, not just me but the guys that all competed during my time. All of the guys that I travelled around with approached it from a more athletic point of view than most people did before them because the dollars were getting better."

The reason why Mahan got so many of those dollars, it seems, was from trying to outdo himself. "I think the biggest thing in rodeo is competing against yourself, and then you have to get out there and really do it. Nobody can force you to get in shape, you don't have a trainer saying 'You have to do this, and you have to do that.' You just have to get up and go do it. And I enjoy that."

Mahan talks a lot about "psyching up" for an event. It's a process of getting ting in tune with yourself, with the animal, with the men trying to beat you, then pulling the last ounce of effort out of your guts and never looking back until it's all over. "When you're competing peteting in three events at once, which I competed in all the time, you don't have time to look back. So I had to be able to divorce myself from one situa tion in riding to the next one.

"If I was in the bareback riding and messed up, or bucked off, or drew a horse that wasn't any good, I had to be careful not to take it into the next event. You just have to chop it off and say, 'Next.' "I understand more about it now in retrospect than I did then, and I've realized that that's what I did.

"And then you might blow the next event, and then you really have to be able to say 'chop, chop,' and go to the third one because you have one more shot at it. But each event has got to be approached as an individual situation, 'cause each one is a totally different game, a totally different animal. It's just a job of getting mentally prepared and staying there.

"Take the good points," Mahan tells today's young riders. "Take all the good points from the previous experience and get good energy from that. You lose energy if you worry about the negative effect. So you take that positive energy and you put it with the positive thoughts going into the next ride ... and that's how you pull it off."

Although he talks about giving up rodeo for good, Mahan may find it as hard to retire from sports as Muhammad Ali did. He even talks half-seriously about climbing back onto a bull: "If I did, it would be to prove to myself that I think I need to do that. But I think that physically, I just don't have it, I haven't worked at it hard enough."

So he thinks he's more likely to lay back a little, run the business. and enjoy the companionship of his recently found girlfriend, Robin Myers. "I'm gonna continue working, doing what I want to do, and take time to smell the roses," Mahan says.

And does he consider himself wealthy? A tender look at Robin, and then: "yeah and not just in money, either."