Cody Stampede not canceled, as organizers 'fight' to host annual event

Cody Nite Rodeo cleared to allow up to 600 spectators

Posted 5/29/20

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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Cody Stampede not canceled, as organizers 'fight' to host annual event

Cody Nite Rodeo cleared to allow up to 600 spectators

Posted

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.


Nikki Tate of Mo Betta Rodeo, the longtime stock contractor for the Cody Nite Rodeo, posted to a Cody Nite Rodeo fan page around midday that the Wyoming Health Dept “DENIED our request to open the Nite Rodeo ... even under their own guidelines they said NO.”

Tate started an online petition, urging people to call or email the governor’s office and ask him to allow the Cody Nite Rodeo to go forward.

“Support all Americans constitutional right to work! The state authorities have taken away our rights and this CANNOT BE ALLOWED!” Tate wrote. “Our town of Cody, Wy along with the whole state has to STAND UP and fight TO BE OPEN!”

The petition was also shared by the Cody Stampede Rodeo Facebook page and roughly 8,050 names had been added to the petition by Friday afternoon.

The mix of confusion, frustration and conflicting information over the plans for Cody’s rodeo season began Wednesday, when word began spreading that the Stampede was about to be called off.

In response, the Cody Stampede Rodeo Facebook page posted a statement early Wednesday afternoon, saying the board fully intended on producing the Stampede and Xtreme Bulls events.

But just a couple hours later, Gov. Gordon, Cody Stampede Board President Mike Darby and others announced that the Stampede — along with Cheyenne Frontier Days and four other large Wyoming rodeos — were being canceled. In a news release, Gordon’s office said that after weeks of discussion, “it was clear that there was no safe or economically viable path forward at this time for these events.”

In a video announcement put together by the Wyoming Office of Tourism, Darby said there had been “no choice but to cancel our celebration of our Western lifestyle”; he added in an interview with the Tribune that “there’s no way that we could social distance crowds of that nature” at the Stampede; hours after that, the Wednesday Facebook post saying that the board intended on moving forward was deleted.

However, the Cody Stampede Board reiterated it intends to try moving forward with the Stampede on Friday. In a statement, the board said the rodeo task force assembled by Gordon — which included Darby — did not speak for the full board.

“The Cody Stampede Board has never approved or even voted on any formal positions of the task force, nor has the Cody Stampede made any official Board decision to cancel any of our rodeos,” said the statement.

Meanwhile, Gordon issued a follow-up statement on Thursday, stressing that rodeo leaders made the decisions to shut down their events and that the state “did not close these rodeos.”

“There are no public health orders issued by the state that would ‘shut down’ rodeos or prevent them from taking place. In fact, we are continuing to work diligently to ensure that our Wyoming State Fair, county fairs, local rodeos and other smaller events can take place this summer,” Gordon said. He added that the state is “ready to work with any rodeo committee to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience.”

If large rodeo events move forward, Gordon said on KODI that the issue will be figuring out how many people are allowed in the arena and how they are kept socially distanced.

“I don’t think that anyone in Cody wants to be on national TV as an example of how not to do things,” Gordon said.

He later said in the KODI interview that getting the Cody Nite Rodeo going “seemed a more doable project in some ways” than the Stampede, but added that, “these are not our choices, they’re the choices of your folks there in Cody.”

Thompson said the Cody Stampede Board board plans to submit an exception request for the Stampede next week. He also said the organization's revised plan for the Cody Nite Rodeo was an effort  “to address the concerns that she [Dr. Harrist] had.”

“It’s an ongoing conversation,” Thompson said Friday, before Harrist signed off the request, adding, “we’re going through the process; we’re trying to follow the rules.”

Another request is also pending to allow the related Cody Stampede Parade to go forward. Billin said Friday evening that he hadn’t seen the final version of the exception request for the parade.

Thompson said the various opinions and information being rapidly shared by media outlets and on social media sites has led to the message from the Stampede board getting changed around sometimes.

“But what I take from all of it is that people care about this community,” Thompson said. “And they want the rodeo to occur — they want the businesses to stop suffering.”

“I see rodeo as a sign of hope,” he continued. “We want to provide that to the community. It’s part of our Western heritage, it’s part of an economic boost for the businesses.”

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