In the first year of Calgary’s Rocky Mountain Cup, the team roping paid out $100,000 across three rounds and a sudden-death finals, bolstering the NFR hopes of teams that qualified to the invitational event, like champions Clint Summers and Ross Ashford.
Summers and Ashford jumped 10 spots in the world standings, with Summers 13th with $44,966.19 on the year and Ashford 15th with the identical sum.
“I thanked that committee so much for giving us a chance at that much money,” Summers, 30, of Lake City, Florida, said. “There are so many people putting together good runs during the regular season, so most of the time you’re winning $2,000 at a time. It’s hard to put together that much money at one time. Even the biggest-one headers over the Fourth play $5,500. But even making good runs, you’ll only win $2,000. That kind of money dang sure helped.”
At Calgary, Summers rode 18-year-old WSR Hesa Alive by Hesa Sonofa Dun and out of Smokes Alive, while Ashford won the rodeo on Oz On A Hot Streak by A Streak Of Fling and out of Oz One Hot Momma.
Who Got In To Calgary’s Team Roping?
Invited to the party were the top five headers and heelers from last year’s CPRA standings, top 13 headers and heelers from last year’s PRCA standings and the top 12 in the current PRCA standings through May 17. The format was two full long rounds, a semi-finals and a Showdown round. It paid through eighth place, along with $37,000 in the long rounds.
Other Big Hits
The 2015 World Champion Header Aaron Tsinigine picked up $9,489, as did his partner Kyle Lockett (who is planning to stay home much of the rest of the year) after finishing second in the final round. Tsinigine, who plans to rodeo for the rest of the summer with 18-year-old Landen Glenn, moved to 16th in the world after that windfall, having sat out most of the Fourth-of-July run.
Rhen Richard and 2016 World Champion Heeler Jeremy Buhler won $5,278 a man in Calgary, spring boarding them up into the top five in the world standings. That comes off the heels of their Fourth-of-July run that netted them $14,341 each—including another Canadian win in Ponoka.
“It’s huge because it starts getting hard to get those big jumps this time of year,” Buhler, 34, from Arrowwood, Alberta, said. “It seems harder to have those big $5,000 hits every week unless you’re Kaleb Driggers. But the biggest thing about Calgary for me is that it’s one of those rodeos that’s been 45 minutes away from me my entire life and we never thought we’d get to see team roping there. Everything about it was awesome I thought. Eventually with the amount of support that was there, and as good as everybody roped and as exciting as it was to everybody watching, I think the Stampede saw everything they needed to see for them to add it to the performance. The steers were good and the setup was friendly, and it was just a good rodeo.
Calgary Stampede’s Rocky Mountain Cup Results:
First round: 1. (tie) Kaleb Driggers/Junior Nogueira and Aaron Tsinigine/Kyle Lockett, 4.7 seconds, $1,989 each; 3. (tie) Lightning Aguilera/Coleby Payne and Reno Stoebner/Tyler McKnight, 4.9, $1,434 each; 5. Shay Dixon Carroll/Evan Arnold, 5.1, $1,018; 6. Cody Snow/Wesley Thorp, 5.2, $740; 7. Coleman Proctor/Logan Medlin, 5.3, $463; 8. (tie) Rhen Richard/Jeremy Buhler and Clint Summers/Ross Ashford, 5.5, $93 each.
Second round: 1. Tanner Tomlinson/Patrick Smith, 3.6 seconds, $2,128 each; 2. Jr. Dees/Levi Lord, 3.8, $1,850; 3. (tie) Derrick Begay/Wyatt Cox and Luke Brown/Hunter Koch, 4.0, $1,434 each; 5. (tie) Coy Rahlmann/Douglas Rich and Kolton Schmidt/Ryan Motes, 4.1, $879 each; 7. Cody Snow/Wesley Thorp, 4.3, $463; 8. Rhen Richard/Jeremy Buhler, 4.5, $185.
Third round: 5. Cody Snow/Wesley Thorp, 4.4, $1,000; 6. Logan Bonnett/Keely Bonnett, 4.5, $1,000; 7. Kaleb Driggers/Junior Nogueira, 0.0, $1,000; 8. Lightning Aguilera/Coleby Payne, 0.0, $1,000.
Finals: 1. Clint Summers/Ross Ashford, 4.0 seconds, $12,500 each; 2. Aaron Tsinigine/Kyle Lockett, 13.4, $7,500; 3. Rhen Richard/Jeremy Buhler, 14.4, $5,000; 4. Luke Brown/Hunter Koch, 0.0, $2,500.
