Contrary to information put out by the governor’s office and one local rodeo leader earlier this week, organizers of the Cody Stampede Rodeo say they have canceled nothing.
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Contrary to information put out by the governor’s office and one local rodeo leader earlier this week, organizers of the Cody Stampede Rodeo say they have canceled nothing.
The rodeo’s board members said Friday that they are fighting for the opportunity to hold their scheduled events — not only the Cody Nite Rodeo throughout the summer, but also the annual Xtreme Bulls competition and Cody Stampede Rodeo over the Fourth of July.
“We want it to happen,” Cody Stampede Board member Marc Thompson said Friday morning, adding, “we’re trying to deliver a rodeo to the community.”
He said the board is currently working with state and local health officials on ways to allow both the nightly and Fourth of July rodeos to go forward — noting that plans will be contingent on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“... We’re trying to follow whatever safety protocols we need to but still have the rodeo for the community because of the great benefits it offers to all of Park County, really,” Thompson said.
He said the Cody Stampede Board is still working on its plans for the Stampede and acknowledged the rodeo could look different this year, with perhaps fewer performances, a smaller crowd and possibly a smaller purse.
“Rodeo won’t maybe look exactly the same as it has historically,” Thompson said. “But we’d rather put it on in whatever format we can afford and we can offer the public — even if it’s not the full scale five-day event that we’re used to.”
Meanwhile, the board is hoping to start up the Cody Nite Rodeo, a daily event that draws smaller crowds than the PRCA-sanctioned Stampede, on Monday, June 15.
Late Sunday night, Park County Health Officer Dr. Aaron Billin announced that State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist had approved an exception for the Cody Nite Rodeo. It will allow the nightly event to host up to 600 people starting June 15.
In a Friday morning appearance on KODI-AM, Gov. Mark Gordon had said that “we always wanted to make sure that Cody had its Nite Rodeo opportunity and so there’s still work on the way.”
He added later in the interview that, “We really think there might be a way to get the Nite Rodeo going.”
Previously, the board requested an exception from the state upcoming public health order — which caps attendance at outdoor gatherings at 250 people starting Monday — to allow up to 750 attendees for the nightly rodeos.
With a seating capacity of 5,000 people at the rodeo grounds, “750 people can space out comfortably & safely from other family groupings,” the board wrote in its request. The document also laid out a number of precautions that rodeo managers would take, including ushers who would “strongly reinforce social distancing.”
Requests for local exceptions are generally made to Dr. Billin, who reviews them, recommends any revisions that he thinks are necessary and, if he believes the event can take place in a safe manner, forwards them to State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist. In this case, Billin said, “because of the significant public interest in the Cody Nite Rodeo, Dr. Harrist was involved early in this discussion.”
Harrist did not sign off on the version of the exception requested by the Stampede board earlier in the week.
“There’s not a formal denial, but they did not issue an approval letter for it. So that means you can’t proceed,” Thompson said.
When Harrist initially fielded the request, she had been under the mistaken impression that the Cody Nite Rodeo was hoping to start on June 1.
In a Thursday email to Thompson, Harrist said she was “happy to discuss having more than 250 spectators, but my strong preference is to stick to 250 for at least through June 15.”
“My reasoning is that a gathering of 250 people is a large jump in the gathering sizes that we are allowing … just two weeks ago, the gathering limits were at less than 10 people,” Harrist wrote, adding, “I really think that we need some time to make sure these smaller event sizes don’t lead to outbreaks before we increase that number further, because the more people there are the more difficult it is to ensure that people aren’t congregating.”
However, in a follow-up email to Thompson, Harrist indicated that she might allow the Cody Nite Rodeo to have up to 750 people per night starting June 15.
“I would consider that,” Harrist wrote, “given by the time it occurs we would have two weeks of data indicating whether holding events of up to 250 can be successful.”
She later approved a modified requested for up to 600 people, with 300 on each side of the arena.
In the Cody Stampede Board’s Friday statement, they said the state had “denied” the earlier request. That version of events apparently made its way to others in the rodeo community on Thursday.