The Decibel - The women changing the face of Canadian rodeo

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Cowgirls love the rodeo just as much as cowboys, but for the better part of the past century, there’s only been one event for women — until now. Breakaway roping, dubbed the fastest event in rodeo, has swept competitions across North America, and is corralling more space for cowgirls in the process. The Globe’s Jana Pruden was at the 50th Canadian Finals Rodeo this fall, where the second-ever women’s event was showcased at the country’s biggest rodeo for the first time. She speaks with Canadian breakaway ropers and gives us a sense of the history of women in rodeo, and just how hard they’ve worked to rope and ride alongside the cowboys. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Lakota Bird is a 28-year-old cowgirl from Nanton, Alberta. And she's been training for years to compete in an event called Breakaway Roping. This fall, she spoke with Globe feature writer, Jana Pruden. Lakota grew up practicing roping as a working skill and then also as a rodeo skill. And she told me this was like the main focus of her life. That's what she did as a girl and as a young woman. And then when she competed at the College National Finals in Wyoming. Which at the time winning the college finals was about the biggest thing you could do in the breakaway roping. And I broke the barrier. So I got a 10 second penalty and I was riding out of

the arena and I was thinking to myself that was the biggest stage I'm ever going to be on and I messed it up. And she told me that she left the arena just knowing her career as a roper was over. left the arena just knowing her career as a roper was over. She was now an adult, she was out of college rodeo, and that she'd watched her brother rope for the championship at the Canadian Finals rodeo, but she just knew that wasn't available to her. And it was kind of sad because you would put so much time and effort and work so hard at your craft and getting your horses ready, and then once you graduated college you were just done. So yeah there was nowhere to continue to compete.

So she was planning to sell her horse and then everything changed. to more women, the cowgirl. Anytime she comes to a rodeo, the horses in your eyes, that's anyone in your area. Jan is here to take us inside the world of pro rodeo, explain why it's taken so long for women to break into the sport, and you'll hear from the cowgirls she spoke to at the Canadian finals who are changing the culture.

I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Jana, thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. I just want to start by asking you, you're a feature writer, you write about all kinds of things. What led you to write about the world of women's rodeo? Yeah, so way back in the beginning of my career,

I started at small papers in rural Manitoba, rural Alberta. And one of the things that I covered was rodeo. And I found it a really interesting world, a really interesting culture at the time. So I've always kind of kept my eye on it and thought about rodeo, occasionally go to the rodeo. And then a few months ago, I started to see this hashtag ad breakaway movement

that was around breakaway roping. And this fall, the Canadian Finals rodeo was coming back to Edmonton and would be having a full slate of breakaway competition for the first time. So I knew I needed to cover it. I want to ask you about breakaway, but I'm going to even back up a step further and ask you just about rodeo in general, because I think many of us outside of Western Canada

aren't that familiar with the rodeo. So could you just tell us a little bit about what it's like and what you would see at a typical rodeo? Yeah I'm sure a lot of people have seen pictures of the Calgary Stampede that's probably the best-known rodeo slash Western themed party in Canada and so one of my friends calls it cowboy cosplay where there's a lot of you know investment bankers and politicians that are all going to be wearing a cowboy hat. But there's also the real cowboys and the real cowgirls. And these are working farmers, working ranchers in many, many cases who compete professionally in rodeo.

And there's a number of events in rodeo. There's roping events, team roping, steer wrestling, bull riding, of course is probably the most well-known and the most beloved rodeo event. The thing about roping that a lot of country people will tell you and rodeo people will tell you is that this is actually a really important skill. When there's calves out on the range, if you need to separate one because it appears to be having a medical condition or if it needs some kind of medicine,

that's how you get it is by putting a rope on it. So these sports arose out of things that people were doing on the farm, on the ranch all the time, and then seeing who could do it best and who could do it fastest. all the time and then seeing who could do it best and who could do it fastest. The rodeo lifestyle for people who are competing, you earn money for placing at different rodeos and you also earn the ability to compete in the Canadian finals rodeo. So people who are rodeoing as a lifestyle, they are on the road constantly during the summer.

They're going to all these little rodeos and competing. And it's a difficult lifestyle. Like it's not an easy thing to be on the road. It's not an easy thing to compete in rodeo. But if anyone's looking to go to the rodeo, there's a good chance there's one not too far away. You might not always hear about it, but yeah, there's a lot of little towns have rodeos. And you've now specifically been

looking at the growing popularity of one of these rodeo events which is breakaway roping. So let's talk about this Jana. What exactly is breakaway roping? So breakaway roping is the second sport for women in rodeo. There's about nine sports for men and now the second event for women. Soo. There's about nine sports for men and now the second event for women. So that's what drew me to it. And here's how breakaway works. There's a calf in a chute and then in the box next to it there's a woman on her horse. She backs the horse right up into the corner and when she's ready she nods. The calf is released and goes off running and she leaves the box with her horse. She has a lasso over her head.

And you have a rope tied to your saddle horn with a little piece of string. So you chase the calf, you throw your loop around the calf, stop your horse and then the string breaks and that's when the time stops. So that's where the breakaway roping title comes from is the time stops when it breaks away from your horn. As soon as the rope goes around the calf's neck, it breaks away. So the calf is unharmed. It runs back to the pen and then that's the end.

And all of this happens very, very quickly. We are talking in two seconds. I saw rides at the Canadian finals rodeo. There were a few rides that were 1.8 seconds, which is considered an exceptional time And then a ride of 1.5 seconds, which literally ties the world record for breakaway roping And reset the CFA record on her 22nd birthday, Maci O'Brien! It was 1.5! I think I'm just a little bit in shock, but yeah. I didn't expect that.

Yeah, yeah, and those girls have something to beat. Yep, yep, come and get me. Yeah. It's like a blink of an eye. Wow, that's so fast. Yeah, when I was writing the story, I was seeing how long it took to say the words, breakaway roping.

If you say them, depending the cadence you say them, it does happen almost faster than it takes to say the words of the event. And so you're saying this is now a newer thing for bigger rodeos. I guess I wonder, where were women competing in breakaway roping before this was included in those rodeos?

Yeah. So there is a junior rodeo circuit and a college rodeo circuit that young people can compete into their teens or in their college years. And breakaway roping has been a part of junior rodeo and college rodeo for a long time. And in fact, girls can compete in a lot of rodeo events at that age that they then can't compete at as they become adults. Wow. So, tell me about that process then.

How did things start to change? Where did this push come from to include breakaway roping? Yeah, it's interesting to look back on, you know, is there one thing, is there one one person, is there one event? And I don't think there is. I think it's this organic movement that you see that it certainly had some influential people involved in it. I think of someone like Jackie Crawford, who's a breakaway roper in the States, who started to advocate for it. There was like hashtags and there was t-shirts and it was just showing up at rodeos that people, you

know, sometimes like an influential person in the rodeo world, a country singer or something would would say, add breakaway and it just happened organically and it happened quickly. It's like once it started to happen, it really caught fire. So in the United States in 2019, there had been less than two dozen rodeos that had breakaway. As of this year, this rodeo season that just finished, there was more than 500. So you can think about in that five-year period just exponential growth and it really has been a movement and that's what we've seen in Alberta of girls and women individually calling up rodeos, writing to rodeos, thinking, okay, well, they did that there for this rodeo,

maybe me and some ropers I know can do it here for our rodeo. And so now that breakaway has been included in more and more rodeos. What's the response been? So good and so positive. And I think that that's one of the reasons why it is catching fire so quickly that they see, you know, when rodeo sees it goes over well, people really like the event. It's very fast, it's very exciting. One of the cowgirls' mothers told me, you know, pretty girls and horses,

like how can you go wrong? And one of the breakaway ropers I profiled, Lakota Bird, spoke to me about this. There was kind of this conception a little bit when we started and I feel like we're still fighting it that we belong at the professional level. Especially you know the older generation of men that when they rode it there was never breakaway roping. That kind of felt like maybe we weren't good enough to be on the professional level. And so the very first year that there was breakaway at the CFR it showed really good, it was really fast and so that's really exciting that we can show that we belong here on a professional level. So as it's been added a lot of women will enter it so that's a thing too for rodeos you know the

more people that want to enter in the smaller rodeos the more competitors you have the more money comes in the more audience comes in so you know it's it's really being seen as an important event a respected event when the women are competing a lot of the cowboys are there and they're watching and they're cheering them on and really appreciating it as an equal rodeo sport. So I wonder how has this impacted the women in the sport like from the people that you talked to Jana, what did they say? These are really amazing young women. They're really banded together in the sense of wanting this to be a good event and knowing that if the event is good and everybody performs well, it looks good on all of them. So it was interesting to me, they're very fierce competitors. They

all want to win, you know, nobody's there to come in second, but yet they all really support each other. And part of that is Lakota Byrd told me she really feels like a pioneer. I think all of us here are kind of excited to be some of the first ones that are kind of paving the way hopefully for the future Breakaway Ropers when it does become an event like the other events. They are making a place not only for themselves, but for all the women and the girls that come after them. And actually, Macy had mentioned that too. It has been a really hard thing, you know,

and it was always like a very male dominant sport. And so it was hard to go home and practice for nothing, you know, and almost felt like you had nowhere to go or nowhere to do anything. And so it was really hard to keep my mindset good when I was in like low places in my rope and wasn't doing great because I didn't think I could ever be a world champion, you know. There was never that opportunity and now that there is, it's incredible. And there would be older women who would come up and say,

I wish this existed when I was riding, or when I was in rodeo, or wanted to be in rodeo. And then there was also so many little girls. And you can just see they're staring with stars in their eyes imagining what they could do. And I think it was especially moving, because that hasn't always been the case for women in rodeo. We'll be right back.

Okay, so we've gotten a sense of what breakaway roping is, how the events grown. Jenna, I wonder if we can talk about the broader history of women in rodeo. How has that looked over the years? Yeah, this was something that really interested me from the beginning of my reporting is that when rodeo really started well over a hundred years ago, it arose out of working on the farm, working on the ranch, where women work alongside the men and are doing so much of the same work that men do on the ranch. And so originally women could compete in any of the events.

Early 1900s is really when rodeo is developing and growing and gaining in popularity. And we see some really phenomenal cowgirls at that time. Bertha Blanket came so close to winning all around cowboy at the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon in 1910. There was another woman named Mabel Strickland who, again, just really a breath away from the world roping record in 1922. Okay, so women were doing really well at this stage, so then what changed with allowing them to participate? I mean I would argue I think they were doing too well and there's articles that I read at the time, I love to go back and read

coverage at the time, and there was an article that I read about the idea of a woman winning the title of all-around cowboy at the Pendleton Roundup, which was that would be considered, you know, the thing that every cowboy was working towards was that title. And for a woman to win it would have been devastating. So in the fall of 1924, it was interesting, I was as I was writing the story for the Globe and Mail in print, it was almost the exactly 100 years ago, like to the very day that the directors

of the Pendleton Rodeo officially barred women from competing in men's events. And I just want to read this headline because the headline that the story ran with was, the champion cowgirls of our Western plains have lately proved themselves every whit the equal of men in the courage and horsemanship of the Wild West Roundup, but they cannot share in the prizes

all because they are women. Wow. And that decision took off. And really by the 1940s, 1950s, we see that women are essentially banned from rodeo competition altogether, except for being rodeo queens or trick riders. There's an idea that's out there that women stopped being allowed to compete in rodeo because people started to think it was too dangerous for women to say bull ride or steer ride. So, you know, I guess people can draw their own conclusions. There's not a lot of documentation

I found that specifically explained that decision. But I think it's clear to me that women were very good at rodeo and that there were a lot of cowboys that didn't much care for that. Wow, huh. That's a really interesting kind of bit of history there to see how it was. It seemed to be, you know, a lot more equal in some respect at least, and then how that was really rolled back. So this starts in 1924, as you say, Jana, and then spreads out from there to other rodeos and that's how this ban kind of spreads? Yeah that seems to be the case that it just becomes accepted that women don't compete in these events.

And it's something I thought about a lot in the reporting of this piece. I mean I did start to wonder, well is there a difference for a woman getting on a bull than a man? Why would a woman not be allowed to do that other than, I guess, protecting her from herself? But we certainly, I've seen a lot of cowboys get their faces stomped in by bulls and, you know, we're not stepping up to protect them from themselves either. So really, it became accepted that women just don't compete in rodeo. The barrel racers at some point

pushed to have barrel racing included and that was a big fight that took many years and it was very unequal for many years. And barrel racing is of course when a rider on a horse races around barrels as fast as they can. Okay so all of this happened, women got banned back in the 20s. And then really for decades women are not competing except for, as you said, barrel racing. I guess I'm wondering then what is it about this moment now, Jenna, that we're seeing this change, that breakaway is being added and this kind of movement is happening. Why now?

I have wondered whether the pandemic had anything to do with it. You know, a lot of rodeo didn't happen that first summer of 2020 and, you know, many of us had time behind our computers or at home and I've questioned whether that was just people had time to put into sort of this advocacy or if there's something bigger happening. I think that the women that I talk to, I don't know if any of them feel like they're fighting a bigger battle. They're just very focused on, you know, we want our event there.

We're very happy, you know, that we're able to come this far. And at some point we'd like to not have to raise our own prize money and we'd like the same prize money that men get. But you know, I don't know if they consider themselves part of a bigger movement pushing for more equality for women in the cowboy space, but I think they are doing that. I think they're, they are truly doing that, whether they see it that way or not. You mentioned about raising their own prize money.

Can you tell me about that? Why would they have to do that? That's a really interesting element of this. First of all, in trying to get into rodeo, one of the ways that they've gotten rodeos to agree to have them is by offering to raise their own prize money. And then Lakota Bird, one of the competitors that I speak to, her dad is a stock contractor, meaning that he raises stock for rodeos.

Myself or other girls have gone and got the sponsorship money and said, hey, please have breakaway roping. I'll get my dad to donate the cattle and I'll get a sponsor to put the money in. All you have to do is let us have it. Like we'll cover the cost, we'll organize having it. At the CFR the top prize they would be able to win was about half what the men's events were getting and that they did raise it themselves and it's a phenomenal amount of money. You know, someone's donating

hair services, nail services, something, a saddlebag they make, someone's grandpa donates something for trucking or transport, and they're really raising the money dollar by dollar to be able to be there and compete. So it's kind of like they're making it as easy as possible for a rodeo to say, okay, we're gonna let you compete and break away here, but there's a lot of work they have to do. So much work. It really is an incredible amount of dedication and that's where I see this idea of them being pioneers, that they are fighting not only that they can go to the CFR but that

other young women after them will be able to and will hopefully get an equal purse and equal payout. You know, one of the things is with barrel racing where the cowgirls also had to fight for many years for equal pay and did eventually achieve it. One of the women I talked to, Jerry Deuce, she is like a queen of Canadian rodeo. She's in her seventies now. She was really on the forefront of women trying to push into barrel racing at the Calgary Stampede and other rodeo events. And I still barrel race. I still love it. I've took great courses.

Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. Yeah, I kick butt still. Yeah. She's the first woman inducted into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. She's a trick rider. She's amazing. She's the first woman inducted into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame. She's a trick rider. She's amazing.

She's 72. Did this trick ride at the Canadian Finals Rodeo that left everybody's jaw on the floor. I mean, everyone should look that up when you do. That was incredible. But she was in part of this movement where they were fighting to get barrel racing in rodeos and to get paid as much as the men. And she told me this story about in 1980

at the Calgary Stampede, all of the cowboys who won got a statue, this bronze statue, and $50,000. Jerry Deuce won, and she just got the statue. When I began it was a man's world. We were in a major event in barrel racing. We had to fight for that, for equal money and it was a process. And so now like it's like all the hard work is So now, it's like all the hard work is coming into the fold. But I love this new event for the girls and the women in breakaway and it's exciting to have another event rodeo for us.

So Jen, it sounds like there's been a lot of successes with breakaway roping, still some challenges it seems like, but a lot of successes in the last few years. I guess I just wonder lastly here, is there a sense that this could lead to more women's events being included in rodeo? So this year at the CFR there was a young woman who competed in what used to be called boy steer riding. It's now called junior steer riding. It's like a bull riding event, but on younger livestock on steers. And this is the last year she can compete because of her age. And I do wonder if women like that, her or someone else will fight

to be able to compete in a men's event. I mean arguably if she can do it when she's 15 and she qualified for the Canadian Finals rodeo, why can she not do it when she's 20? But I do wonder if if that's a conversation to be had about why can't a woman compete against a man in any of these rodeo sports. Jenna, always so great to talk to you. Thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me on. That's it for today.

I'm Maynika Ramon-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.