Macy Auclair had just taken first place in the first night of what the Canadian Finals Rodeo announcer called “the fastest event in rodeo.” Even by those standards, her ride had been quick.
Ms. Auclair was 21 years old, petite, with a soft twang and an old-fashioned country way of speaking, full of yes-ma’ams and no-sirs. But her unassuming air belied a steely determination, a characteristic which, at the rodeo, is best called grit.
You could see it in her eyes before she competed. How suddenly everything else faded away, and it was just her and Pistol and the calf. All of them ready to run.
They’d flown into the arena, Pistol’s hooves pounding into the dirt and Ms. Auclair’s right arm circling overhead, lariat curling like a halo in motion. The rope went around once, twice, then unfurled through the air, looping around the calf’s neck and then snapping free. It happened in 1.8 seconds, so fast you could easily have missed it. So fast there was barely time to say the words of the event out loud. Breakaway roping.
It was the beginning of October in Edmonton, the 50th year of the Canadian Finals Rodeo. Breakaway roping was being included as a full event at the country’s biggest rodeo for the first time, with a slate of 12 cowgirls competing in all five rounds of competition. It was a milestone, historic. Breakaway roping is a women’s event. For 100 years there had been – at most – one event for women in adult pro rodeo. Now there were two.
Ms. Auclair took her victory lap, racing through the arena waving and pumping her fist, holding onto her cowboy hat to keep it from flying off into the crowd. She’d grown up watching her father rope at the CFR, and it was almost unreal to be there herself.
The women’s payouts were half what the men were getting for their events, and the competitors had to raise their own prize money, nearly $100,000 cobbled together by auctioning off yearlings and homemade enchiladas, makeup palettes and hairdressing services.
But they were there.
Later, her spurs tinkled as she walked Pistol back to the stables in the moonlight, both of them settling after the rush of the ride. As she took off his saddle, her brow furrowed. “I broke a nail. How devastating is that?” she said, only half kidding. Her fingertips sparkled in the dark. “Gold polish. Number one. The only colour I get.”
Ms. Auclair had come into the national finals with her eye on the big buckle: a championship title in Breakaway Roping. The fastest – and fastest-growing – event in rodeo. After the night’s win, she had four more rides to take it.
There was a time, around about a century ago, when women could compete in all the rodeo events, when cowgirls were riding broncs and bulls, roping and wrestling steer right along with the cowboys if they chose.
But as rodeo grew, cowgirls found themselves pushed out of competition, relegated to the role of rodeo queen or flag girl, or parked on the sidelines altogether.
Some say the shift began with the death of Bonnie McCarroll, who was fatally injured riding a bucking bronco in 1929, proof – for some folks – that rodeo was too dangerous for the so-called “weaker sex.”
But the shift may actually have been connected more to the cowgirls’ success than their protection. Who could ignore the spectre of Bertha Blancett, who’d come so very close to taking the coveted title of “All-Around Cowboy” at the Pendleton Round-up in Oregon in the 1910s? Or Mabel Strickland, just a breath away from taking the world roping record in 1922?
And so it was, that in the fall of 1924 – 100 years ago, almost to this very day – the directors of the Pendleton rodeo officially barred women from men’s competition. Rodeos around the continent followed.
A news story at the time ran with a headline that proclaimed: “The Champion Cowgirls of Our Western Plains Have Lately Proved Themselves Every Whit the Equal of Men in the Courage and Horsemanship of the Wild-West Round-Up but They Cannot Share in the Prizes All Because They Are Women.”
A strong, fast calf is waiting in a chute. When the cowgirl nods, the calf is released and the cowgirl and her horse take chase. She throws her lasso and when it circles the calf’s neck, the horse stops and the rope breaks. That’s why it’s called breakaway roping.
Growing up in a rodeo family, Lakota Bird could rope and ride with the best of them.
Her father, Manerd, was a stock contractor who raised roughstock to buck and run in the rodeo. Ms. Bird spent countless hours alongside her brother, Logan, on the family ranch near Nanton, Alta., tossing ropes over plastic “dummy” calves in practice and wrangling live ones in the fields for real.
City people don’t always like or understand roping, but it’s a working skill on the range. If a calf needs doctoring, you put a rope on it to bring it in for treatment. At the rodeo, roping is a show of horsemanship and skill.
Ms. Bird explained to people all the time how her father’s stock were healthy and happy, how individual calves were conditioned and chosen specially for rodeo. She thought of it like the calf was part of your team, and it seemed to her there were certain calves that seemed to like it, “rodeo calves” that would just jump right into the trailer, ready to go.
After a rodeo, the calves went back to the family’s range in Nanton to graze and roam the fields, not a hard life for a side of beef.
Ms. Bird roped in high school and college rodeo, but she knew her opportunity for competition was short. Girls could rope until college and in “All-Girl” rodeos, but there was only one professional rodeo event for adult women, and that was barrel racing.
When she completed her final ride at the College National Finals Rodeo in Wyoming in 2018, she left the arena crestfallen, knowing her time competing as a roper was over.
“It was kind of sad, because you would put so much time and effort and work so hard at your craft and getting your horses ready, and then once you graduated college, you were just done,” she says. “There was nowhere to continue to compete.”
She’d watched her brother rope for the championship at the CFR, but it never crossed her mind she’d be able to do it herself. A dream she didn’t know she could have.
But then, “Add Breakaway” started appearing on shirts and hats and horse tack, on signs at rodeos, in posts on social media. After years of lobbying to have breakaway included in professional rodeo in the United States, the movement to let women rope at the rodeo was gathering momentum.
Ms. Bird was just about to sell her horse when the American Rodeo in Texas announced it would be adding breakaway for the first time in 2019. She started thinking about whether that could happen in Alberta, too.
“Be brave, ALWAYS!” Jessi Everett wrote, black Sharpie sliding across a picture of herself as she and the other breakaway ropers signed autographs at the Canadian Finals Rodeo one morning.
A little girl stood across the table, squealing and jumping up and down. Another girl stood more quietly, gazing at the cowgirls in awe.
Ms. Everett had been Macy Auclair’s travelling partner for the summer rodeo season, a Texas cowgirl who came up to rope in Canada and qualified for the CFR. She’d roped her first calf at 10 years old – first try – and had been hooked ever since.
“Do you think you’d like to be a breakaway roper?” she asked the little girl at the table, who giggled shyly in response.
The rise of breakaway roping has been staggering. In 2019, breakaway was in a couple dozen rodeos in the U.S. Five years later, it’s in more than 500, and is still growing.
World champion team roper Charly Crawford announced he was retiring from his own rodeo career to support his wife and daughter as they pursued breakaway.
“This is Kaydence’s chance now. This is Jackie’s chance,” he wrote in the Team Roping Journal. “It’s exciting, and I’m honoured to play my part in it.”
The Bonnyville Rodeo hosted Alberta’s first breakaway roping event in 2020, with a half-dozen women competing. Four years later, there were 70 breakaway ropers competing at some rodeos around the Prairies. The women had made that happen themselves, calling and e-mailing rodeo organizers and asking them to add breakaway, sweetening the deal with Ms. Bird’s father donating the cattle, with the women finding sponsors and raising prize money.
“I think a lot of times people think we’re a little pushy about wanting to be a part of this, which I totally understand, but we’re so grateful for even what we have now,” Ms. Everett said as she brushed her horse, Bacardi, in the barn one afternoon. “There’s always going to be room for improvement, no matter what event you’re in. I think our next goal is added money – or the same, equal money – as the other events. But we’re here. We’re just so excited. I think that does get overlooked a little bit, how excited we are for what we do have.”
As American rodeos have proven, there’s value in breakaway. A new event for women brings in new competitors, new energy, new audiences and new money – including a burgeoning market for specially trained and bred breakaway horses.
And as it turns out, audiences like breakaway roping. It’s fast and skillful, and the calves don’t look uncomfortable or scared like they sometimes do when they’re being wrestled or tied in the men’s roping events. As Ms. Auclair’s mother, Michelle, noted, “fast horses and pretty girls” is an appealing combination.
A woman strolled over to the autograph table, and the cowgirls scrambled up for a picture. At 72, Jerri Duce was a legend in Canadian rodeo: the first woman inducted in the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame, a champion trick rider, and one of the women who pushed their way into professional rodeo in the 1970s and 80s to compete as barrel racers.
“It was a fight, and there were a lot of women that worked really hard to get that done,” Ms. Duce said. “You have to give credit to them for the effort they put into just being equal.”
Ms. Duce remembered how at first women only got to compete in the kids’ portion of the rodeo, like they were entertainment, not real rodeo. Even when barrel racing became a recognized event, the cowgirls were told what to wear, and received the barest portion of attention, accolades and money.
In 1980, all the cowboys who won at the Calgary Stampede got $50,000 and a little bronze statue. Ms. Duce just got the statue.
At the Canadian Finals, Ms. Duce did some trick rides for the rodeo’s “Retro Night,” the septuagenarian hanging upside down off a galloping horse as it sped through the arena.
“I think you’re a badass,” Ms. Auclair told Ms. Duce.
“And I love you girls,” Ms. Duce said, pulling her in for a hug.
They all wanted to win, but the Canadian Finals Rodeo had belonged to Ms. Auclair. On her third ride, the night of her 22nd birthday, she’d clocked 1.5 seconds. It was a new Canadian record, and tied the current world record.
“Come and get me,” she challenged the others. Breakaway ropers supported and competed against each other in equal measure. As Ms. Auclair thought of it, quoting Proverbs: “Iron sharpens iron.”
The final night of competition brought the biggest crowds to the rodeo, and a wild buzz of energy pulsed through the building. While a strip club down the street papered cars with leaflets promising “the hottest cowgirls in town,” the real cowgirls had been hauling water and hay in the stables, tending their horses and steadying their nerves, tossing ropes over plastic dummy calves over and over again, waiting for their moment.
Breakaway competitions can be won or lost in a fraction of a second. There’s no room for error. If you miss the calf, or get a 10-second penalty for starting too quickly, you’ve lost the round.
Ms. Everett pushed into the top spot that evening with a 1.8 second run.
Ms. Auclair took a breath as she got Pistol into position.
She nodded, and they released the calf. Ms. Auclair and Pistol flew into the arena. Her lasso circled once, twice, then arced through the air. It circled the calf’s neck and broke away. She looked up at the clock for her time: 1.8 seconds. A tie.
The two friends took their victory lap together, horses galloping side by side.
They shared the night’s prize, but the total of Ms. Auclair’s five rides made her the national champion. She collected her championship buckle and saddle in the middle of the arena, amid fireworks and fanfare and cowboys.
The rodeo life isn’t easy. The miles are long, the costs high. Nothing is guaranteed. Ms. Bird hadn’t placed, and as she headed back to the stables that night, she knew her rides hadn’t been what she hoped or what she was capable of.
“I had a disappointing day today,” she admitted.
But somehow, she still felt good. She was glad the others had done well, and she knew they were proving themselves, all of them together. Proving breakaway was a good event, and that women could rope and ride as well as the best cowboys in the country. Proving cowgirls belonged at the rodeo.