Eeehaw and all that crap.

From the Calgary Stampede website:

The very first chuckwagon competition at the Calgary Stampede occurred in 1923. Stampede founder Guy Weadick recruited ranchers to enter their chuckwagon and roundup crews in competition, and the Rangeland Derby was born.

Billed as the No. 10 Event evening competition, the "Cowboy's Chuck-Wagon Race" offered purses and prizes totaling $275. An outfit consisted of four horses, a wagon, a driver and four helpers. The Yukon's Bill Sommers won the first race. For the Official Canadian Championship, each outfit was required to "Cut a figure eight around barrels, out through backstretch into track, run around track back to camp ground, unhook team from wagon, stretch fly. No less than two stakes, and make fire. First smoke decides winner."

Considering the number of accidents on the track as chuckwagon races get faster and faster, let’s consider how the races came to be what they are today. The above bit of research shows that in the beginning the races were much different. In my memory, starting in the 50s, several changes have been made to the chucks to make conditions safer.

The current grandstand and infield replaced an earlier version in the 1970s. If you think the infield is too small for the barrels and turns now, you should have seen it then. Wagons have been refined, stove baskets removed so horses running behind a wagon don’t step in them, tent poles have been shortened so they no longer fall out of the wagon or drag on the track. Drivers and outriders wear safety gear. This year we’re down to two outriders to clear the congestion a little.

Still we have accidents. I see two main reasons for this. As in the accident on Thursday evening, and many other accidents in other years, a horse suffers a fatal medical incident before the accident causing a roller coaster of events. This is not unique to chuck wagon races – it happens in horse racing, harness racing, show jumping, steeplechase etc. With the veterinary care and monitoring chuckwagon horses receive, everything possible to predict this type of danger is in place. But accidents happen. I’ve seen chuckwagon races several times and I’ve seen a horse collapse and die on the track…but not at the Stampede but at one of the many small town rodeos that dot the prairies each summer. Unlike bullfighting, which is an accepted sport in many parts of the world, no one starts out planning how a wagon horse will die.

The second reason places blame on a public that demands extreme excitement, the vicarious thrill of speed and danger at such events. That grandstand is full because the audience is looking for an adrenalin rush. Prime viewing from Scotchman’s Hill is packed because people are looking for a thrill. Everyone who watches races knows there is danger involved – you can smell it. How can it not be dangerous but is it more so because horses who are bred to run have an accident? Race car drivers die, skiers die, mountain climbers die and although I have trouble with the concept, everyone says they died doing what they loved. But that’s not for horses, I guess. I’m not saying the horses make a conscious choice as extreme sports people do, but thoroughbreds do love to run.

And in today’s world, how many people would pay to watch the races as they were originally set out? How many people would have the patience to wait, at the end of each race, for the cowboys to unhitch the horses, set up a lean-to and start a fire? Today’s thrill-seeking crowd would be bored to tears.

But It is no longer about tradition, people. It’s about getting the adrenalin going. So don’t whine when the unexpected happens and you’re brought up short at the fragility of life; don’t whine when you have to console your children who have been devastated because you’ve neglected to explain the danger, or, for that matter, where their hamburger came from when you whine about other aspects of rodeo. And don’t blame the cowboys who make every possible effort to keep their horses – the thoroughbreds, many who have been given a second chance – safe.