Las Vegas has always been known for money and glamour and this years return of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo had all of that along with the huge payout at the Priefert World Series of Team Roping Finale. What a month to remember in both of these record breaking events.
Kendra Santos and Lane Santos-Karney have a great article in this issue that covers all of the records and the huge winnings at the Wrangler National Finals. These two stellar writers highlight some of the great moments and history of WNFR.
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My Resistol is off to the World Series of Team Roping for putting on a great week of roping at the South Point Equestrian Center. Big money was won by a lot of ropers during the week and the set up and cattle where excellent. It is a fine run team roping and to be there and watch the ropers from all over the world compete in a week of roping that paid close to $10 million was great.
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The first weekend of the WNFR saw many of the ropers down in Bullhead City, Arizona, competing at the Lucky 777 Roping which had record team entries this year. Catch all of their results in this issue as well.
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The James Pickens, Jr. Roping, which has always been held at the Tejon Ranch, will move this year and will be held in conjunction with the highly successful Clovis, Calif., rodeo in April. The roping will be held on the Monday and Tuesday prior to the rodeo. This roping will be the day after the Red Bluff Round-Up and should attract several of the big name ropers. Be sure and catch all of the ads for this event starting in the February issue of RSN.
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I know I always seem to pick on the headers at the WNFR, in that they just don’t go out and catch and leave the rest up to the heelers. Well, this year I started off that way and I think I have finally come to the conclusion that they (headers) are going to go for every round and let the average take care of itself. This is the roping style and mind set of the new breed of ropers and next year may be worse with the higher payout. It seemed like this year, though, that the two veteran headers were going to be the only ones to rope all their steers, until Jake lost his rope on one. They roped conservative and still placed in the rounds. I like to see a fast run as well as anyone but also would like to see the best headers in the world not miss.
Congrats to all of the new champions in all of the events, but a special shout out to the team ropers Clay and Jade for having a great finals and year.
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The World Series has many new champions as well and many happy ropers who won some of the big money that was awarded this year. I’m sure next year will be bigger and better than ever.
My special thanks to the South Point for being such a great host during the two weeks I was in Vegas. Their entire staff go out of their way to accommodate the large number of people who are there during this time of year. I love the new Priefert Pavilion.
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A great thanks to my staff here at Ropers Sports News for another great year. Happy New Year to all!