PBR helps write next chapter of Helldorado Days history

I don't follow rodeo very much, I might only watch a couple events a year. (They never show the bulls enough for my liking, I'm always more interested in the bulls than the cowboys.) So I won't be post very much about rodeo on this blog. Maybe only an article or two that stand out.

 

But I thought I would post this since I did find "Helldorado Days" interesting. Las Vegas is only a 5 hour drive from me so since it is basically in my back yard, so to speak, this article caught my eye.

 

(by Keith Ryan Cartwright pbr.com 3-25-16)

Hoover Dam is all of 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas.

More than 1,000 heroic men – 100 of whom lost their lives – spent five years building the concrete arch-gravity dam. Construction began in 1931 – the same year Las Vegas legalized gambling – and lasted until 1935, coinciding with the Great Depression. It is believed that between 10,000-20,000 men descended upon Boulder City, Nevada, hoping for work.

Those who were hired and those who hoped they would soon be needed took up residence in the small town that was otherwise the home of only 5,000 people.

However, because of strict policies forbidding drinking, gambling and other vices, many of those men spent their rare days off in nearby Las Vegas, which featured only a fraction of the trademark glitz and glamour the PBR experiences today when it hosts its annual Last Cowboy Standing.

Nevertheless, the presence of thousands of workers and sightseers helped Vegas avoid the pitfalls the Depression would have otherwise created.

As legend would have it, in 1934 or 1935, depending upon who you believe, the City of Las Vegas founded Helldorado Days with the help of promoter Clyde Zerby as an opportunity to celebrate the men building Boulder Dam – it was only later renamed after President Herbert Hoover – combined with the Western heritage of the city’s earliest years.

Zerby is said to have skipped town in ’34 and the city teamed with Elks Lodge #1468 in 1935, to produce the first official or, as some folks see it, the second Helldorado Days.

“It’s now over 80 years old,” said Jim Buell, longtime sponsorship chairman and past general chairman of Helldorado Days, which is now the longest-running civic event in the history of the city.

Just it as grew despite the Depression era, Helldorado Days survived World War II.

For years, the men who built the dam would return for the event, which has always been held in the month of May to coincide with the city’s birthday.

“The heydays of Helldorado Days, I think it’s fair to say, were the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,” Buell said. “By the 1980s the character of the city changed.

“During that time Helldorado Days was absolutely the event of the year. Virtually everybody in town was involved with it in one way or another.”

Casinos workers and school children alike would dress in Western attire.

There were three parades and the likes of Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Larry Hagman, Doug McClure and others served as grand marshals, while the ‘80s drew entertainers like George Strait, Alabama, Hank Williams Jr. and PBR favorite Moe Brandy.

Helldorado Days also featured a rodeo that saw legends as big as Larry Mahan, Roy Cooper, Tuff Hedeman and Joe Beaver competing in front of sold out crowds.

This year, PBR living legends J.B. Mauney, Guilherme Marchi, Silvano Alves and Mike Lee will be among the all-time great bull riders to etch their names in the folklore and longstanding traditions of Helldorado Days, which has partnered with the PBR to host its final Major of the 2016 first half, Last Cowboy Standing.

Unfortunately, as the turn of the century approached and gaming became the city’s primary business, Buell said the city felt more influence from California and it quickly grew apart from its roots as an old Western cowboy town.

Participation began to wane in the 1990s.

In 2005, the Las Vegas Centennial brought back one of the three parades and in 2009 they also brought back a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo, which the local Elks Lodge has produced.

“It’s a really important event for the City of Las Vegas, the Mayor and the council people,” said Esther Carter, who produces the annual parade and is a city employee who works on special events.

Buell added, “The purpose is to focus on our tradition as a Western town. Today you wouldn’t think of Las Vegas as a Western town although it certainly is.”

It’s precisely why they’ve partnered with the PBR, which is increasing its presence in Las Vegas, home of the now-expanded PBR Built Ford Tough World Finals.

“As the leading Western sport, PBR feels a responsibility to help revive an iconic western event in Las Vegas,” said Sean Gleason, CEO of PBR. “The inimitable adrenaline-pumping energy and excitement of bucking bulls on the Vegas strip will rank with the very best entertainment experience the city has to offer.”

The pairing is a means for Helldorado Days and Las Vegas to reconnect with the city’s Western heritage.

“(The PBR’s commitment) makes Helldorado Days bigger and better,” said Buell. “Given the marketing power of an organization like the PBR, it should go nowhere but up again.”

Carter added, “It’s been a great partnership between the city and Elks and now we’ve got another great partner in the PBR.”

That comes at a critical time.

With the rodeo facing the prospect of losing its previous home after seven years, Helldorado Days, which has always been held in the downtown area, will move locations this year to be part of the PBR Fan Zone in “the Las Vegas Village” outside the MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

The village -- the site of a range of fun activities for all ages – will also feature daily Bullfighters Only performances, and then the main event – PBR’s Last Cowboy Standing.

“A PBR Major, paired with a rodeo, and a giant festival, on the Vegas strip: Now that’s a destination event,” Gleason observed.

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http://www.pbr.com/en/news/features/other-features/2016/3/pbr-helps-write-next-chapter-of-helldorado-days-history.aspx

Nueva iluminación para el ruedo de Las Ventas

(las-ventas.com 4-8-16)

Ayer concluyeron los trabajos de revisión y mejora del alumbrado del ruedo de Las Ventas, gracias a los cuales se han doblado los niveles medios lumínicos y se ha mejorado la uniformidad de los mismos en el coso de la Plaza de Madrid.

A lo largo de una semana se han sustituido 74 lámparas, lo que ha permitido pasar de unos niveles lumínicos medios de 629 lux a otros finales de 1.389 lux, que a partir de ahora iluminarán el ruedo, mejorando la visibilidad para los espectadores y la seguridad para los lidiadores.

Durante los trabajos de acondicionamiento se ha procedido también a la reorientación de todos los focos, a la limpieza de todos los proyectores, incluidos los elementos ópticos (difusores y reflectores), y a la recuperación del rendimiento lumínico perdido por suciedad. Todo ello permitirá eliminar las zonas de sombra o de menor iluminación en el ruedo, al aumentar la uniformidad.

El nuevo equipo de iluminación está compuesto por lámparas de halogenuros metálicos, de 1.500 W. de potencia.

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http://www.las-ventas.com/noticia.asp?codigo=6916

Un banderillero en Sevilla, April 4th, 2016

photo by Maurice Berho

Enrique Ponce in Guadalajara (Spain), April 3rd, 2016

 

Bull from the Ventorrillo ranch 

Caballo Andaluz

 

artwork by Juan Linares

 

www.juanlinares.es



A God of the Bullring Made Human

(by Geoffrey Gray nytimes.com 2-1-16)

It was not long after the first trumpets on Sunday that José Tomás found himself in familiar territory: inches from the vicious horns of a fighting bull, so close they nearly brushed up against the pink silk of his traje de luces, or suit of lights.

Careful not to twitch a muscle, which could have been a trigger for the bull to attack him, Tomás stood firm in this dangerous position and alone at the center of the Plaza México, the biggest bullring in the world. Tomás’s cultish followers are called Tomasistas, and the bullring was filled with more than 45,000 spectators, the largest draw for a matador in recent memory.

 

All of them were eager to witness the Great One before he decided to retire or before another horn wound ended his career for him.

 

Tomás, 40, was not like other matadors. He was the embodiment of mystery — in and out of the ring. For years, he has refused to give interviews or to appear on television. You had to see him live to see him at all, and he performed so infrequently, usually once or twice a year, that tickets sold out within hours.

 

His mastery, though, was not only in his marketing. Tomás’s performances were savage ballets, a blend of elegance, fearlessness, timing and sacrifice. He seemed determined to pass bulls ever closer to his body, pushing the boundaries of how close a man could get.

 

“He’s a mystic,” Allen Josephs, a professor of literature and Spanish studies at the University of West Florida who has written extensively about matadors and bulls, said in a recent interview for the magazine True.Ink. “We want the great matador to bring the animal in closer and closer and closer. It’s playing with death. Why do we play with death? Because by playing with death, in some ways, we overcome it.”
 

By overcoming death, Tomás represented a kind of immortality, and now here he was, swinging the red muleta behind his back, the red furls of the wool cloth slicing through air heavy with cigar smoke as the 1,150-pound Bellotero, his first bull of the afternoon, gazed at his tiny waist. Finally, Tomás made a pass, and the crowd exploded.

Ole!

Then another pass.

Ole!

Then he got too close. A horn caught the inside of Tomás’s leg. He crashed to the sand, and the crowd shrieked as the bull’s horns tore away at the back of his thighs.

As a teenager in a suburb of Madrid, where the bullfighting schools are perhaps the most competitive in Spain, Tomás struggled to attract attention from the bullring promoters, managers and financiers who bankroll young matadors. He moved to Mexico to attract attention and perfected a style of bullfighting so dangerous he has nearly been killed.

 

In 2010, Tomás had just finished an effortless natural, or left-handed pass, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, when a bull plunged his horn into Tomás’s thigh, punctured the femoral artery and drained much of the blood from his body. For a while, it was unclear whether Tomás would survive.

 

“When your mind has gotten used to the fact that you will die and then you don’t, life turns a different color,” said Antonio Barrera, a matador who sustained countless gorings and nearly bled to death as a teenager with an injury similar to the one Tomás sustained in Aguascalientes. In 2012, Barrera spoke in “Gored,” a coming documentary that captures his final bullfight, about how overcoming death had allowed him to perform with abandon.

 

“For me, the bull is like a god,” Barrera said. “The wild bull has a lot of values the human being admires: to be fierce, to be impetuous, to have a breed, to have self-esteem, to fight for what you want, to fight for your life. That’s why you consider him a god, and why in many cultures he has been considered a god.”

Bullfighting is more religion than sport, more sacrifice than killing, a ritual left from the ancient world. Among the pharaohs of Egypt, the wandering tribes of the Levant, the Greek and Cretan amphitheaters, the bulls of the ancient world were deities.

 

“In the eyes of these people, the bull had become a symbol of the all-powerful and the all-fertile,” Jack Randolph Conrad wrote in “The Horn and the Sword,’’ an anthropological history of the human-bull relationship. Bulls represented the spirit of immortality, Conrad wrote, and were worshiped in elaborate ways.

 

In ancient Egypt, women appeared naked in front of bulls to absorb their fertile powers, and Roman soldiers bathed in bull blood and feasted on bull testicles to obtain the immortal spirit. The bulls were sacrificed in elaborate rituals by taurine priests to bestow their godly powers to the public, and the modern bullfight can be viewed as a distant, commercialized relative of these ancient sacrifices.

“It all comes back to sacrifice,” Josephs said. “You know, the matadors are really the only high priests from the pagan days we have left.”

 

In the Plaza México on Sunday, as Tomás lay crumpled in the sand, helpers lured Bellotero away. But not for long. Only a few passes later, Tomás was on the ground again, as the bull hooked his horns underneath the jacket of Tomás’s suit and trampled him. Somehow, the horns missed him, and Tomás went on to register a remarkable performance. His derechazos, or right-hand passes, were long and smooth, and his left-hand passes were timed perfectly.

 

He then placed the sword cleanly, and earned an ear, or trophy, though the audience was clamoring for two ears, an honor akin to a triumph that would allow him to be carried from the plaza on shoulders.

"He gives me the entire range of emotions,” Pedro Pérez, a Tomasista, said as Tomás made his way back to the passageway around the ring, his face covered with dirt. “I don’t know if I want to be happy or sad, cheer or cry. You never know what will happen next.”

Pérez had arrived early from Tlaxcala, another state, and had rarely seen the streets outside the bullring so packed. Vendors had set out their grills and paella pans, and restaurant tables were filled with aficionados wearing sombreros and ascots and feasting on specialties like shrimp tacos doused in cheese sauce and washing it all down with cold micheladas, beer cocktails laced with pepper flakes and spiked with clam juice.

 

Oddly, it was hard to find any animal rights activists, who have developed a presence in Mexico City, often shouting through their bullhorns that something as cruel as the bullfight should be abolished in places that still hold them: the south of France; Spain, outside of Barcelona; Portugal; Peru; Mexico; Colombia; Ecuador; Guatemala; and Venezuela.

 

The bullfight here, featuring Tomás and Joselito Adame, a Mexican matador, was the biggest of the winter season, if not the coming year. Before the gates opened, front-row seats were being resold on websites for nearly $8,000 each.

 

Bullfighting may have taken a financial beating in recent years — from protests, prohibitions, the struggles of the Spanish economy — but Tomás has been considered a kind of savior amid the dwindling spectacle, a lone figure who, through his bravery and art, can still inspire a new generation of enthusiasts.

 

But inside the stadium, as the sun fell and the house lights came on, Tomás struggled. His second bull lacked strength, and despite the engineering of some breathtaking passes, he missed and struggled with his sword, killing poorly.

 

And with his last bull, he never had a chance. Once the chute swung open and the animal emerged, the frustrated crowd whistled in protest. The bull, despite its speed, was too small, they felt. A substitute bull was called in. This bull was also small, and lacked strength, and Tomás had no choice but to kill it quickly and register his most disappointing performance in years.

 

Adame then seized the moment. With the final bull of the day, he executed all the tricks to win the laggard crowd over. He dropped to his knees, spun the capes like pinwheels and got so close he touched the horns with his fingers.

He even attempted a dangerous style of killing called recibiendo, placing the sword as the bull charged into him rather than jumping over the horns. The move capped a performance that lacked Tomás’s poetry but earned Adame a triumphant two ears for excitement. Adame, not Tomás, was carried through the streets as fans reached out to touch his hand, his suit of lights — any part of him. It was as if they were touching a saint.

 

Back at his hotel, Tomás emerged to have a late dinner with his handlers. He wore dark jeans, black shoes, a flamenco-style scarf. He was asked how he felt.

 

“What can one do?” he said in Spanish, shaking his head. He looked sullen and deflated and very much like a typical matador after a rough afternoon — no longer the mysterious god of the bulls so many people had come to see.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/sports/jose-tomas-matador-bullfighter.html?_r=0

Bloodless Sport

 

 Every year, from January through March, a bullring on a remote South Texas ranch draws busloads of snowbirds to its no-kill fights.

 

(by Katy Vine texasmonthly.com 6-14)

 

Red Renk, a water-purifier salesman living near the border, hatched a bullish idea. He’d been obsessed with matadors ever since the age of fifteen, when he watched the Mexican bullfighter Pepe Luis Vázquez perform at a ring in Chihuahua City called La Esperanza. When Renk was in his twenties, he’d even decided to try the sport himself. He fought bulls for five years as an aspiring matador, until a thousand-pound beast’s horn punctured his upper leg and tore through his stomach, in 1967. Later, he watched his son David become the seventh American bullfighter to earn the title of matador, performing all over Mexico as “El Texano.”  

 

After his son’s retirement, in 2000, Renk began to miss the drama of the ring. He was restless at his rural home in La Gloria, population 100, and fantasized about bulls pretty much constantly. He decided to build a bullfighting ring on his sixty-acre ranch. Never mind that he would have difficulty drawing a crowd to his town, about 55 miles northwest of McAllen, and that Americans weren’t interested in the sport. (Only a handful of permanent rings currently exist in the United States—all in California and all supported by Portuguese communities.) But Renk, who was 65 at the time, was tenacious, and he was experienced, having organized and promoted bullfights in places like the Astrodome in the eighties. David, now 51, lives just down the road and remembers, “His determination was off the charts.” One day, Renk marched a few yards away from his ranch gate into a pasture shaded by mesquite and ebony trees and began measuring paces for a ring one hundred feet across.

“I call it the ballet of life, not the ballet of death,” the 77-year-old said on a sunny morning this past spring, in a voice hoarse from Marlboros. Behind a fence, a herd of 29 cows—and one four-year-old San Mateo breeding bull, who often participates in the events at Renk’s Santa Maria Bullring—grazed in a field dotted with magenta winecups. Though traditional bullfighting is practiced on the Mexican side of the border, it is illegal in the United States, and in Renk’s ring, the bullfighter’s kill is only symbolic: instead of driving a sword through the animal’s withers and into its heart, the matador reaches over the bull’s horns and plucks a flower affixed to the hide with Velcro and a little glue, an action that requires a close dance with the animal and thus drives crowds to their feet.

Everyone told him he was crazy to open a bullfighting ring so far from a metropolitan area, but those detractors hadn’t anticipated who would show up: the winter Texans. His first event, in 2001, packed the stands, exceeding his expectations, and while violence along the border has scared off some customers in the past couple of years, busloads of tourists still travel from nearby RV parks to his ring, which has a seating capacity of around one thousand (“depending on how wide their butts are”).

The tourists who make the journey and the local ranchers who keep box seats for the main season, from January through March, have witnessed shows by some of Mexico’s best matadors. Last February, for example, Renk brought in Cesar Castañeda, a world-class matador from Tijuana, and Isaac Leal Montalvo, a young matador from Monterrey. No matter their prominence, though, it’s the female bullfighters who make the strongest impression, Renk says. “You talk about a matador, they don’t know who the hell he is, but the ‘Mayan Princess’ . . .” he trails off, nodding knowingly.

Renk has watched his fights captivate fans, even though many don’t follow the sport. “The Spaniards—all Latin people—refer to the passion for bullfighting as el gusano, the worm, and it eats at you the rest of your life. El gusano never leaves you.”

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http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/bloodless-sport/