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.
NFR
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.”
Five years ago, Stran Smith wasn’t too worried about calf roping. He was more concerned about simply staying alive.
World champion rodeo athletes aren’t given bonus checks for winning their prestigious titles.
If Randon Adams wasn’t a team roper, he might be able to make a living handling dynamite, nitroglycerine or a surgeon’s scalpel.
Rookie Tuf Cooper, 18, won Friday’s calf roping go-round with a time of 6.7 seconds, the quickest of the National Finals Rodeo.
Members of the rodeo community helped select the 10 most memorable events of the past 49 National Finals Rodeos.
About 400 exhibitors are camped out through Saturday in the Las Vegas Convention Center for Cowboy Christmas, the official gift show of the National Finals Rodeo.
A calculator will come in handy during the last two nights of the National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center.
