Josh Peek seems to be one of those cowboys who believes that timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance. He’s big on faith, on a higher being guiding our destiny.
National Finals Rodeo
As he has almost every year for the past quarter-century, Marty Jandreau trekked to Las Vegas for the National Finals Rodeo.
Bill Engvall has spent 11 Decembers in Las Vegas for the National Finals Rodeo. To him, one image sums up the strange confluence of cowboys and casinos.
National Finals Rodeo
If you didn’t live around Las Vegas before it had an Eiffel Tower and New York City skyline dotting the Strip, then you might be surprised that Southern Nevada’s roots are buried deep in western culture.
Trevor Brazile will feel right at home tonight when he rides into the Thomas & Mack Center for the opening of the National Finals Rodeo — and not just because the 33-year-old Texan has competed in the event every year since 1998.
Trevor Brazile started the National Finals Rodeo a year ago with an overwhelming lead in the all-around race and won his sixth championship as the world’s best cowboy.
The 2009 National Finals Rodeo marks the 25th year that the event has been held in Las Vegas and at the Thomas & Mack Center. The 10-day rodeo remains the biggest in the world, with the best rodeo athletes, but much of the landscape has changed around the event. Following are facts and figures comparing the 1985 NFR with the 2009 NFR:
Lewis Feild left the 1985 National Finals Rodeo with his first two world championships, in the first year the world’s richest rodeo was held in Las Vegas.
Growing up in a remote village in Brazil in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, Robson Palermo taught himself how to ride bulls by watching videotapes of fellow countryman and three-time Professional Bull Riders world champion Adriano Moraes. … Palermo successfully rode seven of his eight bulls in last year’s World Finals in Las Vegas en route to the title, and he scored 92.25 points Sunday on Black Pearl to win the third round of this year’s Finals at the Thomas & Mack Center.
First things first. The cell phone voice mail. It is one of those standard messages by a woman who sounds like a librarian reciting rules about talking in your quiet voice. I was expecting some background tunes of “Abilene.” Maybe some “Happy Trails.”
