96 Years Strong: The Ute Mountain Roundup Returns to Cortez

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  Cortez held one of its biggest weekends of the year with the return of the 96th annual Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, or PRCA, sanctioned event brought the top cowboys and cowgirls in the country to the Montezuma County Fairgrounds. You’re watching the Local News Network brought to you by Keesee Motor Company and Hospice of Montezuma. It’s one of the largest events that Cortez, Colorado has. It’s deep in our tradition. We’re a community of ag, ranchers, farmers. You can get anywhere from four to 10,000 people a night coming through here. Whether it be just to see the rodeo or coming to the carnival. They hit gas stations, they hit restaurants, they hit local shops. They make an impact on our community. To put on an event of this scale a stock contractor works behind the scenes to bring the broncs, bulls, steers, and calves used in the performances. About two weeks ahead of the rodeo dates, we’ll get the entries for all the cowboys, and then find out how many barebacks, saddle, broncs, bulls, calves, steers, all of that that we’ll need. We start putting them together and then logistically get ’em all on our trucks and get ’em down here a couple days before, let ’em kind of get acclimated to the weather and the feed. Those animals play a bigger role than most fans realize. We’re only as good as the animals that we bring, and, and you’re only, you know, as good as your weakest animal. So we try to keep every animal as strong and healthy as we possibly can, and they’re a part of our family. Each one has their own name and their own identity and their own character, and, and we just, we treat ’em like our family. That care pays off in the arena. Contestants rely on strong animals for a good performance, especially for rough stock riders where the animals’ performance is included in their score. 50 points of your score is, is from your animal. So even if you did your job at the full potential and you don’t have a good dancing partner, you’re still going to have a low score. So, and, and, and vice versa, you could maybe not have, maybe not do as good of a job and still have a really good animal, and that still helps your score. So a good animal, you can’t win without having one. The rodeo returns next June for its 97th year. For more information, visit utemountainroundup.org. And for more stories like this, visit LNN.news.