Sometimes, it actually is your first rodeo — as a spectator, at least. And when you first see, and feel, a 2,000-pound bull thrash around just yards away, it’s enough to make you feel like a kid again.
But there’s no kidding around inside the arena, especially from the rodeo clowns who bravely distract the bull after he’s tossed his rider and is still looking for a target. Keagan Mayo, the head clown, part carnival barker, part lasso artist, actually wears a bullseye patch on his backside. But it doesn’t seem right to apply the title of clown to the two other men who risk their bullseyes diverting bulls all day. True Grit Rodeo co-owner Daniel Lanier calls them “bullfighters,” and after seeing them in action at last Saturday’s Culpeper Rodeo, you would have to agree.
One of them, Cleive “Wolfpack” Adams, looks like his name sounds, only lankier — which helps when you have to push yourself off a bull’s charging head with your hands. Countless times, he and his cohort Jonaton Rodriguez rushed in, defying gravity, and two-stepped around the furious beasts while the rider was ushered to safety. As Lanier says: “It’s all live, nothing is scripted.”
It may have seemed scripted, or velcroed, for Matt Allgood of Saline, Mich., who won the 2024 Culpeper Rodeo with a time of 8.95 seconds. In the moment, nine seconds feels like nine minutes. Not only did Allgood beat out 22 riders from all over the country and as far away as Brazil, but he was the only one to ride both bulls for more than eight seconds, which is the minimum for a score. In the final round, he bested five other riders who could not hang on long enough to score.
Another flavor of rodeo action offered lasts 15 seconds. That’s about how long it takes a barrel racer to circle two barrels on a horse and dash down the home stretch of the arena. For Rappahannock County native Meaghan Boucher, who grew up showing English and western, “barrel racing was kind of like my stress relief, because I got to go play and go fast, and I didn’t have to worry about how I looked on a horse … I’m not going against what a judge says. I’m racing against a clock and myself.”
For those looking to see the action up close, there is another rodeo in Gordonsville on Sept. 14 at Oakland Heights Farm.
