The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is more than a dust-covered, history-book reminder for those living in the nation's fourth largest city.
Yaw-hoo!
High-tech Houston has grown up without losing its passion for pointed-toe boots and Western-style hats, at least during February and early March when the world's largest indoor rodeo comes to the Astrodome.
Hundreds of trail riders traveled along lonely farm roads and crowded freeways leading into Houston, Texas, arriving from places as far away as West Texas and Louisiana.
Consider 547,736 customers attending the 1986 Houston Rodeo, or an average crowd of more than 34,233 for each of the sixteen performances held over a twelve-day period. Picture, if you can, a 1,245-pound beauty contest winner, a Charolais steer named Poncho who stole the livestock show when crowned grand champion.
You get the idea? Houston takes its rodeo seriously, and so do the cowboys who enter it. Nearly 700 members of the professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and another 117 female barrel racers from the Women's Professional Rodeo Association joined hands with Houston this year in a sesquicentennial salute to Texas.
At stake was $339,170 in total prize money, although the contestants themselves provide about half of that in entry fees, as well as foot their own bills for travel and hotels. It's a professional sport in its most unspoiled form. And not unlike fans of auto racing and ice hockey, pro rodeo crowds discover a certain fascination in the high-risk, high-speed action, and the unpredictability of the untamed livestock involved.
Perhaps that's what makes bull riding the biggest crowd pleaser, arguably the most dangerous of the six rodeo events held at this, or any other, rodeo. Bull riding is where a 5-foot-6, 140-pound cowboy ties one hand to the humped-back hide of a 1,900-pound bull with real horns and little sense of humor, and then tries to ride around the arena for eight seconds.
Eight seconds can seem like eight weeks. The bulls generally win more than half the time, kicking, twisting, recklessly pulsating, until they spin the rider into a dangerous dismount--scheduled or otherwise.
Gary Toole of Mangum, Oklahoma, won the 1986 Houston Rodeo bull riding championship on March 2 with scores of 68, 74 and a near-record 87 points in the short-go finals when the biggest money was on the line. The Astrodome record is 88 points set by Butch Kirby of Comanche, Oklahoma, in 1978 and Ted Nuce of Manteca, California in 1985.
In all rough stock events (bull riding, bareback, and saddle bronc), the cowboy and the animal are judged equally, up to 50 points apiece. The world record for one bull ride is 98 points, turned in by Denny Flynn of Charleston, Arkansas, at a pro rodeo in Palestine, Illinois, in 1979.
Toole's winning ride March 2 came on a National Rodeo Finals bull called No. 189, and earned the
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