Event of the Month

The faintly Scottish-sounding lilt of Canadian English rides on the air like a cowboy atop a cantering horse. “Billy Laye he won $50,000 at the Calgary Stampede, eh?” Eh? My friend Linda Felbeck and I find ourselves in a covey of Canadian rodeo fans, high in the stands of the north Scottsdale arena. Below us, high-ranking American and Canadian rodeo cowboys compete in the dust.

Ty Murray, at 21 the top United States money winner in all around competition during 1990 and '91, charges out of a chute on an angry mount. The frenzied bronc kicks and leaps and twists, but Murray stays aboard with such perfect grace he makes the ferocious ride look routine. His score is high.

Yankee spectators hoot and cheer as, full of the “right stuff,” he dismounts. The Canadians applaud him, too.

This was the former Wrangler Jeans Rodeo Showdown at Rawhide; now it's the Coors Rodeo Showdown, and this year it will be held at WestWorld.

By whatever name or wherever it happens, this is one of North America's “Big Three” rodeo events, and it pits the 80 win ningest American and Canadian cowboys in competitions in bareback riding, steer wrestling, barrel racing, calf roping, saddle bronc riding, team roping, and bull riding.

Five performances take place along with country-and-western dances, the Miss Rodeo Arizona competition, and a kids' corral for the small-fry, making the showdown a real event.

Linda's having a great time watching the crowd. “Wow!” she exclaims, “look at that woman!” A lady we saw riding with a pennant in the arena stands at the refreshment bar. She wears a red chiffon blouse embellished with sequins and fits her glove-smooth blue jeans in a way that neither Linda nor I ever will again. We appreciate her good looks almost as much as we enjoy the broad-shouldered young athletes.

Linda also loves the clowns, those comic heroes whose job it is to draw an enraged bull away from a thrown and pos sibly injured rider. This after noon one Brahma bull lunges out, tosses a cowboy into the dirt, then spins, hooks the man with its horns, and hurls him feetfirst into the air. Rac ing against the animal's rage, a clown virtually throws himself into the bull's face while some one else runs to the contes tant's aid.

This was Jim McLain, we believe, the same clown who minutes earlier ap peared between events riding a huge ludicrous mechanical cow a Trojan bull, as it were and car rying on about “Cow Patty on the loose.” His act put the international audience in stitches. Now he has spared a young man from a few stitches of the surgical variety.

The only event in which women compete, we note, is barrel rac ing. Six bodacious ladies from Alberta, Texas, Nevada, and Arizona speed around the arena and tear past obstacles on enthusiastic horses. Probably, Linda and I speculate with a frisson of delicious chauvinism, cowgirls are too smart to climb onto a bull that figures it can prove its machismo by stomping a would-be rider into dust.

A shiny red stagecoach rolls into the arena, drawn by six gleaming black draft horses. “Binion's Horseshoe Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas,” reads the gold lettering on its side. Ty Murray reappears, incredibly, after his encounter with the saddle bronc, this time clinging to a Brahma bull.

Color, violence, adventure, humor, friends all to be had at the Coors Rodeo Showdown. Some fun, eh?

THE COORS RODEO SHOWDOWN AT WESTWORLD IN SCOTTSDALE WHEN YOU GO

The Coors Rodeo Showdown will be held October 8-11 at WestWorld, 16601 N. Pima Road, Scottsdale. Performances are scheduled for 8:00 P.M., Thursday and Friday; 1:30 and 8:00 P.M., Saturday; and (the finals) 3:00 P.M., Sunday. For information or to obtain tickets ($10 to $19), telephone Sportscom, (602) 946-9711.