COWBOYS AT WEMBLEY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3673, 5 August 1924, Page 8

COWBOYS AT WEMBLEY.

MUCH-DISCUSSED RODEO. WILD WEST THRILLS. (See Illustrated Pages.) (Fsoii Oe.n Own Correspondent.) LONDON, June 17. Much discussion has centred round the rodeo show which the public had the first opportunity of witnessing last Saturday. ■ie question was asked ■whether this essentially American form of entertainment was a suitable one for a British Empire Exhibition. Allegations of cruelty were also levelled against it. Now that the public have seen it for themselves, the judgment seems to be that the lassoing and throwing ot steqrs is not a sport for the English people. Last Saturday was practically the first summer day we have had, and over 167,800 people went to Wembley. Of these, some 135,000 —75,000 in the afternoon and 60,000 in the evening—found their way to the Stadium, and save for the event already mentioned they had the opportunity of seeing one of the most thrilling performances that has ever been brought to this country. As an exhibition of horsemanship, of skilful and daring riding by men and women, the rodeo was all that was said or imagined to be. Tex Austin, king and leader of cowboys, who manages and directs the show, which Mr Charles B. Cochran has organised, rode into the arena in brilliant sunshine, at the head of 100 cowboys and cowgirls, all splendidly horsed, and wearing the picturesque, many-coloured dress of the ranoh It was a fine tableau, introducing at the outset the atmosphere of the prairies. In the rear, riding on an ass, was the clown of the assemblage, whose subsequent postures and antics supplied the comic relief to this stern contest between man and beast. With shrill hallos and indescribable calls the procession dispersed, and competitions and displays began in bronk-riding, steer-riding. steer-roping, steer-wrestling, varied or fancy trick-rid-ing, racing, and roping. The hundred and more long-tailed horses were of all shapes and colours—skewbald, piebald, flea-bitten, roans, white, and black. The owners had a look of foolish brilliance on the green English turf in the June sunshine, a magenta and scarlet blouse in juxtaposition was alarming, and there was a green uniform which was most startling. The goats’ ftair and other comic “trouserguards”—as someone called them—suggested the kinema. The first event was bare-back bronk riding. One marvel in all the bronk riding was that every bronk but one was a past master in buck-jumping. Some were better than others, but what you saw as each man emerged from the chute was an animal with its nose just above the ground, its back a 3 round as a dolphin’s, and its legs coming together like an elephant’s on a tub. The bronko pitched, rolled, twisterf, see-sawed, wriggled. squirmed, dipped, plunged, and generally indulged in a frenzv of contortion. A whistle was blown, a picket rode alongside, grasped the cowboy round the waist and lifted him from the back of the bronko, which, free of its bated burden, raced off.

The bronks, it is claimed, are not taught buck-jumping, but have man-hating, manthrowing, instincts, for wbioh special animals are famous over the two Americas. The dismounting is as severe a test almost, as the holding on. Only one hand—the left—holds the single rein or halter. The right is swung in the air with a ludicrous likeness to a tennis player making imaginary shots. The riding is of a quality never seen in the show ring. The body sways with amazing litheness, almost looseness, and the grip seems to be chiefly with the leg below the knee. In Bronk riding the cowgirls were evidently just as good as the men. Unstinted admiration, coupled with sheer wonder, was the only possible judgment. In manual skill—divorsed from strength and courage, the play with the lasso comes first. The men can keep a circle of rope with a 20-foot circumference in perpetual being above their heads, at their side, just off the ground. They look like men doing Indian club exercises, or like the beater of a big drum, but the club is a sort of snake writhing into circular patterns. Riders ■galloped past and horse and rider were easily looped up. One master of the lasso caught two galloping horses and their riders es he was standing on his head, while another rider surrounded his own horse and a friend’s in a continuously revolving circle of rope. Nothing could be cleverer than the trickriding of the women. As they galloped across the arena they sat backward on the neck of the animal. Some hung down the side of their horses with hands almost touching the ground. One girl made her way down in front of her horse’s chest and up again to the saddle on the other side, another in some unaccountable way got right down under the horse’s girth and up the other side. Still another completed the length of the arena standing with one foot only on the saddle. And yet another jumped from the saddle to the ground as the horses cantered briskly and the next moment sprang to the saddle again. Wild steer riding looks harder than Bronk riding, though it is not supposed to be. A steer can do anything that a horse can in the vtay of wriggling, but it dops it automatically. The horse thinks. The steer’s motions are the result of its trying to propel itself forward at a higher rate of speed than nature intended. The horse is actively trying to throw the rider. The last feature of the afternoon was the wild horse race. It must be seen, for it cannot be described. The horses have never been saddled, and do not want to be. They are brought out of the chutes with two men to a horse, and the two men have got to get the saddle on the horse, and one has to ride it without a bridle across the line. One second after the word “Go!” was given the arena became a nightmare of struggling horses and men. In most cases the horse won easily and retired. Somebody finally got a saddle on, however, then a second followed, and the two were over the line in a dead heat. Steer wrestling is truthfully said to be the grand climax of sensational cowboy endeavour. It certainly gives the spectator his greatest full of thrills, for there is ever present the possibility of disaster, not to the beast but to the man. From a galloping horse the cowboy leaps on to a steer he Is overtaking, grasps its formidable horns, thrusts out his feet ahead of the animal to act as a brake, and twisting the neck by a scientific levering

of the horns, brings the beast to a stop and to the ground. It is 12 stone of human muscle, directed by human brain, against 70 stone of brute flesh and bone, plus a pair of wicked 12in prongs, and if the cowboy accomplishes the feat in under 20 seconds he is uncommonly smart. The world’s record is seven seconds, held by Mike Hastings, a hefty Oregon “bulldogger,” 30 years of age, who was once pierced by the horn of a steer and on another occasion had a leg broken. The shortest time the trick was done on Saturday was 27 2-ssec. Steer wrestling challenged criticism, but it was the roping and throwing of steers that met with disapproval. This was done from the saddle. The steer is released from the pen, and is allowed to run past a certain mark. The cowboy then gallops after it and throws a lassoo over its head. The loop may grip the neok, or it may only grip the horns. Then the horseman rides hard in an oblique direction to the steer, or else he rides so that the rope comes round the hind legs of the beast. There is a sudden jerk, and the steer is hurled on its back or on its side. In some cases, the strain on the rope was directly opposite to the path of the steer, so in this case the animal might be almost hurled in a back somersault to the ground. Once having brought the beast to ground, the horse keeps the strain on the rope, and the cowboy rushes to the steer and ropes its legs up. In some cases the steer was on the point of rising, and the cowboy had to throw himself upon it and bring it to the ground again. Several times the beast was on its legs before the cowboy was by its side, in which case he had to mount again and make further efforts to throw it. The whcle performance is not a pleasant one. Out on the open plain, where thousands of more or less wild cattle have to be rounded up and prevented from straying, and where man has often to take quick and stern measures to protect the lives of himself and his horse, the halfehoking of a dangerous bull by the whirling lariat and the throwing of the animal, is a man’s life against the bull’s, the man’s act in the circumstances »s born possibly with a broken limb, are justifiable, of necessity. It is not sport—which is what visitors to the Rodeo were asked to believe. The lassoing and throwing of domestic animals more or less tame in a comparativelv confined place like the Wembley Stadium, big though it is, is comparable with the coursing of rabbits in a field in which all the bolt-holes are stopped—the kind of “sport” which is forbidden by law in this country. During the evening performance, when the vast amphitheatre was flooded with electric light, and the racing horsemen and plunging cattle were like figures in a mad dream, a steer that had been lassoed and thrown, and then released, limped away with one leg dangling and apparently broken. The animal was afterwards shot. “Ohs” expressed the pity of the spectators, and when the next steer was brought into the arena there was much hissing and booing. These signs of disapiroval were renewed as other beasts were roped and thrown, but they were drowned in cheers—impartial cheers either for steers that evaded the flung rope or cowboys who caught their quarry. Another competitor in bringing his steer to the ground fell with his horse, and the steer, breaking loose, charged a bunch of cowboys at the side. They climbed up the

adjoining network like a lot of monkeys, just missing being gored. Mr C. B. Cochran, the organiser of the Rodeo, was asked, on behalf of the general body of the press, if he would care to make a reply to the demonstration. He said: “The booing was organised by about 200 medical students. They came to me before, the show .and asked if I would let them in for nothing. I told them that the gate money was for the British Charities Association, and that I had no power to do so. They said that unless I did they would break down the barriers. They finally paid and went into the 2s part, and commenced demonstrating from the very outset. At first it seemed good-humoured, hut when the steer roping started they commenced to boo and hiss. The unfortunate incident of the steer, which has been destroyed, led the crowd to hiss, too. It was a pure accident, and is very unusual in this sort of contest.” Although the steer-roping item is to. be taken off the programme, tne competition, for which there are £0 entries, is to be held privately. A medical man (Dr William Lloyd, i.R.C.S.) writes to Sporting Life on the subject of the steer roping. In the course of .his letter he says: “Many forms of legitimate sport will be compared to justify the public presentation of lassoing, throwing, and roping the steers, but I maintain tnat those helpless and unfoi’tunate animals have received the knock-out blow, or what might more correctly be termed partial hanging or strangulation. The head of the beast is partly dislocated from the top of the spine, and so causes complete collapse—that is to say, stunning or temporary unconsciousness. The (more complete the throw, the more severe is the wrenching and loss of control and paralysis of the muscles of the body and limbs. It is that condition which allows the competitor to rope the limbs of the beast with ease and rapidity. In conclusion, let me say that I greatly admired the cleverness, courage, and stamina of the cowboys—and cowgirls, too —but as a medical man and a sportsman I must enter my emphatic protest against that part of an otherwise magnificent show which displays cruelty to animals.”