RODEO
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WILL Miller and Brady Smith can both boast a world champion title.
And the duo will be throwing out an invitation to all and sundry to take them on for that title in this weekend’s Sibelco Attunga Down Under Rodeo World Championship Cowhide Drag.
The popular cowhide drag is part of the Attunga Rodeo’s twilight program which kicks off 10am Saturday with a slack round before the Grand Entry and Grand Opening from 4.30pm at the small village’s Bill Newman Memorial Recreational Ground.
The cowhide drag features a competitor being pulled around a peg, behind a horse on a small piece of carpet. The fastest team will again be crowned world champions.
But with the fun event behind them, Miller and Smith will concentrate on the business end of rodeo - that of team roping and calf roping.
Both events are run on time. And they’re both precision events, according to 20-year-old Will Miller, a stud hand at his parents’ Steve and Cheryl Miller’s Erin Park Stud at Appleby.
“You’ve really got to have your mind on it in the team roping,” he said.
That event requires the header to rope the head of the steer before his partner, the heeler comes in from behind to rope its feet, and secure the rope to the horn of the saddle.
“If there’s not enough head start given, then you break the time barrier, and that imposes a penalty.”
Miller and his travelling mate Brady Smith, a 19-year-old machine operator with TPE in Tamworth, do “as many rodeos as we can” each year.
“Most weekends we’re away somewhere,” Miller said.
Along with the team and calf roping, patrons can sit back and enjoy a full program of bull riding, saddlebronc (which features the Bill Newman Memorial Saddlebronc), and bareback as well as the timed events of barrel, breakaway roping and steer wresting.
And with this year’s program to be run under lights for the first time, patrons can be assured of plenty of action in the cool of the evening, according to rodeo president Cameron Glass.