Lait benefits from familiarity
Bareback cowboy rides Street Dance to another win
Attention stock contractor Greg Kesler. There’s a special delivery headed your way.
“I need to send Kesler a bouquet of flowers for bringing that horse and letting me get on her that many times,” bareback rider Matt Lait said of Friday night’s all-too-familiar dance partner, Street Dance, who he paired up with to win the goround with 87 points.
“That horse has been around probably as long as I have,” Lait, 30, said of the 15-year-old buckskin mare.
“I know that horse as well as she knows me,” continued Lait, who also won Thursday night’s go-round.
“I’ve been on (Street Dance) a lot. Probably been on her six or seven times, and except for the first time, I’ve always done well with her.”
Amazingly, this was the third time Lait has drawn Street Dance this year alone. He won at Kalispell, Mont., with a score of 88 points, won a round at Cloverdale, B.C., and now has another first-place buckle at the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
Knowing Street Dance, who was in the top three bareback horses consid- ered for this year’s horse of the year title, as well as he does, Lait pretty much knew what to expect.
“She usually comes out two or three jumps and then circles either right or left,” he said.
When the horse goes left, as she did Friday night, Lait said it’s a tighter circle.
“Then she jumps out of it just like she did this time. I know her tracks.”
Competing in the CFR for the seventh time, Lait, who is a former Canadian Tour golf champion, had never won back-to-back rounds before.
Like Lait, Texas steer wrestler Hunter Cure had a pretty good idea of what to expect with the steer he drew.
“Clayton Moore was 3.4 on that steer the first night. I thought if I could just duplicate his run, I felt it would pay off again,” said Cure, who went a 10th of a second faster with a 3.3-second run.
This week, Cure is using Moore’s horse, Pistol, who was last year’s steer wrestling horse of the year.
“Pistol gave me as good a look at the steer as I could ask for,” said Cure.
After finishing sixth in the world standings, Moore will be competing in next month’s National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. He said being able to compete in Edmonton at the CFR might pay off down the road.
“The CFR sets the tone for a per- son going into the NFR. Some guys won’t have run a steer in competition for perhaps two months. This gives me maybe a little a bit of a competitive advantage to be able to come here and perhaps do well.”
STOCK REPORT: Rylan Geiger won the saddle bronc round with 88 points on Calgary Stampede’s Timely Delivery, a horse whose father, Grated Coconut, and his mother, Zippy Delivery, were both Canadian and world champions. In 2011, Geiger finished second after leading the aggregate through five rounds.