Rodeo

Rodeo is a traditional folk North American sport with influences from the history of Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) and American cowboys. Rodeo events include the rough stock events bull riding, bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding, the timed events steer wrestling, team roping, calf roping, the rarely seen steer roping, and women's barrel racing, breakaway roping, goat roping and pole bending. The participants include cowboys, cowgirls and also rodeo clowns or bull fighterss. See also gymkhana and polo.

The oldest and largest sanctioning body of professional rodeo is the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) which sanctions around 700 rodeos annually. The Professional Bull Riders (PBR) is a recent organization dedicated to Bull Riding and puts on a number of events. There are also high school rodeos, amateur rodeos, and rodeos for women. Some colleges, such as the University of Montana have a rodeo team. The National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association is responsible for the College National Rodeo Finals.

There are numerous rodeos held throughout the United States and Canada. Among the more prominent are the Calgary Stampede; Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyoming; the National Western Stock Show in Denver; Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in Houston, Texas; and the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas, Nevada. The NFR is held each December at the Thomas and Mack Center and features the top 15 (in terms of earnings) competitors from each of the events. In 2003, it is estimated that attandance at the 10 days of the National Finals Rodeo will top more than 170,000 with another 9 million people watching the rodeo on television.

Rodeo first appeared as an exhibition Olympic sport at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Native Americans are active in rodeo and have their own associations, see Indian rodeo.

Animal rights and animal welfare organizations are vocal critics of rodeos, because of reported injuries and distress to the animals involved. Dr. C.G. Haber, a veterinarian who spent 30 years as a United States federal meat inspector, described the animals discarded from rodeos for slaughter as being
:“so extensively bruised that the only areas in which the skin was attached [to the flesh] were the head, neck, leg, and belly. I have seen animals with six to eight ribs broken from the spine and, at times, puncturing the lungs. I have seen as much as 2 to 3 gallons of free blood accumulated under the detached skin.”

American Humane contends that rodeos are not an accurate or harmless portrayal of ranching skills; rather, they display and encourage an insensitivity to the acceptance of brutal treatment of animals in the name of sport. Such disregard of our moral obligations toward other living creatures has a negative impact on society as a whole and on impressionable children in particular.