Christmas got cancelled this summer and a Foothills area bull rider would love to take some of the sting away with an overpriced beverage.
“This year is definitely different – I wouldn’t have been home at all this weekend,” bull rider Brock Radford said of the July 3-5 weekend. “Normally, I am trying to hit a bull riding every single day.
“That is why they call this time ‘Cowboy Christmas’ because there is so much going on with our Canadian pro rodeo, the Canadian PBR. Across the border (rodeos) in Montana or Wyoming are not going this year… And no Calgary Stampede.
“I’d give anything to buy a $15 beer there now and I never thought I would say that.”
Rodeos in Canada – including the Calgary Stampede and many in the United States -- have been cancelled due to COVID-19.
(Radford had not received an invite to the Stampede before it was cancelled).
The 25-year-old Radford, who rode in the Calgary Stampede in 2017 and 2019, is now doing chores at his recently purchased High River home. He’s also helping on the family ranch Meadowbank way.
The Foothills Comp grad hasn’t been on a bull since he finished second at a Canadian PBR event in Lethbridge on March 6.
Then the rodeo world came to a halt when COVID-19 hit North America in mid March.
It follows a 2019 in which he was injured – he rode in Calgary shortly after knee surgery.
He had an opportunity to ride in the United States in competitions with no fans or strong restriction this season, but he declined. To compete in a few and then come home to Canada for two weeks of isolation, didn’t catch his fancy.
“Hopefully, this fall I will be able to go down and hit a couple of those events," he said,
He's hoping some bull riding events will open up in Canada in the next month or so.
“It might be no fans in front of us,” Radford said. “I think Canada will be following the U.S. in rules and stuff.
“If we have to have our fans wear masks or be six feet apart or all of us wearing masks when we are not getting on, we don’t care we just want to get back to bull riding.
“It’s a waiting game right now.”
His other main source of income is stunt work in movies, but that work has also hit hard times.
“My two main sources of income, bull riding and the movies, have taken a pretty good hit,” Radford said. “I’ve been smart with my money with what I have won over the last few years bull-riding.
“If I was 18, 19 or 20, back then I just blew any money I got. I’m a little smarter now, but sitting out a few months, definitely hurts a guy.
“We will all be glad to get back to what we were doing.”
