FARMINGTON — JUST AS PROMISED, the animal rights activists have been showing up each night at the Olympic Command Performance Rodeo, but things don't appear to be going well.
For one thing, police herd them into a concrete pen next to the highway — "Like cows," one of them said — adjacent to the parking lot but far from the arena. They hail people as they drive past them, but the people they hail are driving pickup trucks and wearing Stetsons and belt buckles as big as steaks and the standard-issue tight Wranglers and boots.
They're going to convince these guys that rodeo was cruel to animals? That rodeo must go?
"It's probably not going to happen," said Bosh, a 20-year-old Canadian who stopped en route to Central America to enlist in the anti-rodeo cause.
It was like pitching gun laws at a Marine convention.
Lewis Feild, the former five-time world rodeo champ, has seen it all before at other rodeos. Same crowd, different names. He was unloading his horses from a trailer behind the arena. "Walk with me and I'll talk to you," he says, as he checks saddles, wraps a lariat and pokes around in his trailer making last-minute preparations.
"Those people out there don't love my animals any more than I do," he says. "They don't love them as much as I do. They don't take care of them. They don't know."
He had just spent the entire day grooming and brushing his horses. He puts them to bed every night by covering them with a blanket. They eat before he eats. They sleep before he sleeps. He has spent many nights sitting on the floor of a barn with a sick horse's head in his lap, stroking it, talking to it. He's helped deliver foals, given them medicine, cleaned their shoes, trimmed their manes.
"They take a lot of time," he says. "But they give a lot of enjoyment."
Feild climbs into his trailer and changes into a clean shirt, then wraps a red silk scarf around his neck. It's time for the rodeo. "I love it," he says.
Back out on the highway, the protesters are halfway through their chilly three-hour shift. They are about 60 strong, mostly young people looking for a cause. They shout slogans and hold up signs while police officers stand by and observe the circus.
Bosh knows how the group is perceived. "People think we're young, idealistic, zealous — that we're just basically nuts. Look at all this security. It's unbelievable. They searched all of us. I mean, we're about nonviolence."
Inside the arena, Larry Sandvick was climbing on board for the bareback event, an eight-second exercise in whiplash and spine abuse.
"It ain't softball," says Sandvick. "I've been stepped on, kicked, squashed and whatever else you can imagine."
On second thought, maybe the animal rights people have a point. Rodeo IS cruel. To the cowboys. Maybe something should be done to protect these guys from pain and suffering. Sandvick took more big hits in a single ride than Marshall Faulk does in an entire NFL season. The only reason his head didn't fly off his shoulders is that it repeatedly slammed into the horse's rump. Which is why Sandvick wears a custom-made "pillow," as he calls it, in his hat. No kidding. Sandvick removes his hat to show you a foam rubber pad wedged into the hatband.
All over America, rodeos are putting chiropractors into Cadillacs. Sandvick has chronic neck problems. He's got a few chips in there somewhere, and when he turns his head it sounds like he's grinding sand. A few years ago he started wearing a modified neck brace during his rides.
"Every corner of my body's been fixed," he says, among them two shoulder surgeries, two knee surgeries and numerous broken bones.
Maybe the anti-rodeo protesters should be holding up pictures of cowboys getting dumped on their heads. SAY NO TO COWBOY CRUELTY.
Like Feild, Sandvick, a third-generation bronc rider, has nursed animals back to health with his own hands and spent thousands of dollars for their care and feeding. He has cried over the loss of a horse. Animals are his hobby and his livelihood. He believes the life of a rodeo animal beats the slaughterhouse or standing in a muddy feedlot.
"They get the best feed in the world, and they do about 10 minutes of work all year," he says. Sandvick tugs on a beer while his small children run around his feet. "I love it. I'd ride till I was 90 if I could."
Doug Robinson's column will run daily through the Games. You may e-mail him at drob@desnews.com.