ProRodeo Sports News - April 12, 2024

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Legendary Pete Carr Pro Rodeo horse Big Tex passes away

BY THE NUMBERS 93 The score of the bareback ride registered by ProRodeo Hall of Famer Joe Alexander aboard Beutler Brothers & Cervi’s Marlboro in 1974 at Cheyenne Frontier Days. The ride is still the rodeo record. Alexander won five career PRCA Bareback Riding World Championships from 1971-75. 1961 The year the PRCA team roping finals were held in Santa Maria, Calif. That year Al Hooper was the team roping world champion with $6,346. 1975 The year J.D. Yates made PRCA history that still stands today. Yates, at 15 years, four months, became the youngest cowboy ever to qualify for the National Finals Rodeo. J.D., a header, partnered with his dad, Dick, at the ’75 NFR. The duo placed in five rounds, highlighted by winning Round 4 outright (6.6 seconds), Round 9 outright (6.2 seconds) and they split the Round 10 win in 6.6 seconds.

Big Tex was born to be a bucking horse on the Zinser Ranch in Michigan, but he was much more than that Most of his life, he was recognized as one of the elite broncs in ProRodeo. He was selected 17 times to perform at the National Finals Rodeo, a credit to his breeding and to the care he received. The 2010 Bareback Horse of the Year, Big Tex passed away last Tuesday on the Pete Carr Pro Rodeo ranch near Moscow, Texas. He was 24. He was the epitome of everything right in rodeo. Sired by the legendary stallion Night Jacket, Big Tex lived up to his heritage. He was the kind of horse the cowboys dreamed of riding, whether it was early in life under a bareback rigging or the last half in saddle bronc riding.” Wyatt Casper, a four-time NFR qualifier, was just one of many cowboys that loved drawing Big Tex, and several of them had the horse multiple times. PRCA World Champion Wade Sundell won both Houston and San Antonio on the athletic beast in consecutive years, registering 90-point rides both times. Dean Wadsworth finished second both times the two matched up. During his last out in Hempstead this past October, Big Tex bucked off a young cowboy, and Wadsworth was there to see it. The veteran bronc buster from Buffalo Gap, Texas, took note of just how much the animal loved his job. “One of the coolest things I saw was this year at Hempstead during the bareback riding,” he said. “Big Tex got himself in the load alley and was ready to go. He was just standing there waiting for his shot.” Billy Jones, the operations manager for Pete Carr Pro Rodeo, found the horse in the pasture Wednesday morning. He said Big Tex had a pretty typical routine along with the hundreds of other animals on the southeast Texas ranch. “It looked like he just laid down and died,”

Big Tex at 2020 NFR

PRCA ProRodeo file photo

Jones said.

Sometimes the tough guys just give out, and Big Tex was definitely tough, and he proved it a decade ago. While in Guthrie, Okla., for the RAM National Circuit Finals Rodeo, he began to show signs of colic. In his case, his colon was displaced and was between the spleen and the kidney. On-site veterinarians from the Oakridge Equine Hospital in Edmond, Okla., cared for the animal for 48 hours. Travis Adams was Carr’s operations manager at time, and he was there with the vets. The doctors performed a rolling maneuver in which Big Tex was lifted off the ground by his hind legs with a tractor to help release the colon off his spleen and kidney. While it worked, it failed to relieve the horse’s discomfort, so he was sent 45 miles north, where doctors with Oklahoma State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine surgically alleviated the blockage. Big Tex was expected to be out of action for four to six months, but veterinarians didn’t realize the animal’s make-up. Three months later, he was bucking in the championship round at the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days Rodeo, and he was back in Las Vegas that December for the NFR.

New episode of NFR Extra Podcast available The newest episode of the NFR Extra podcast is now available. The podcast, which is hosted by Brilynn Bentley, Steve Goedert, and Andy Seiler, includes featured guest – PRCA CEO Tom Glause. Visit the link below for the podcast. https://www.nfrexperience.com/podcast/902c9a04-b9a3-4f4a-8abc-94e956c2a668

ProRodeo Sports News 4/12/2024

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