Extra Effort Pays Off in the Rodeo Arena for Otero at Calgary Stampede
Michael Otero and his barrel racing wife, Carlee Rae, showed up in the Calgary early for the Stampede, to take advantage of an extra opportunity to rope calves.
“I love the calves up here,” Otero said. “It’s different than the beef calves that we normally rope in the United States. Mr. Bird (the calf supplier) had a jackpot yesterday and I told my wife ‘I know we’re tired and we’ve been traveling a lot, but I’ve got to go and get sharpened up on those longhorns and get practiced up, and it worked in my favor.”
It did indeed, as the Alabama-raised cowboy came out in the opening round Friday of the Calgary Stampede to better the field by nearly a second, taking the first-place check of $7,000 with a 7.6-second run.
“I worked out a few kinks, and my mare was ready, and it all worked out,” he said.
Otero is pleased his 12-year-old red roan mare wound up as a rope horse.
“She’s very well bred,” he said. “Actually, my wife bought her as a barrel racing horse as a four-year-old, and it didn’t end up working out. She said, ‘well you have her’, so I ended up turning her into a calf horse, and she loves it.
“I felt like my calf didn’t want to start. He acted really relaxed in the chute, but this start is so fast, I kind of just had to take a chance. Luckily, my mare is always on ‘go’. She’s just that kind of horse. The calf wasn’t going quite as fast as I was hoping, and she let me throttle her a little bit, and it worked out great.”
Truth be told, Otero is a little relieved it’s his turn to earn in their rodeo family.
“It was kind of a running joke last night between her and I. She won like $23,000 in the past ten days,” Michael said. “I said ‘Momma’s been bringing home all the bacon. You’re the hot money winner’. But I said, ‘not til tomorrow, though, I’m going to surpass you’. She started smiling and gave me a fist pump, so she was ready for me to do good.”
The importance of getting a good start in the three-day pool competition isn’t lost on Otero.
“You can’t lollygag around and hope for a win later. You’ve got to seize the moment and try to win as much as you can in the given opportunity. Today I felt like I was beside myself. I felt like God took over me and made that run. I was just there, kind of guiding it. It’s crazy – I can’t explain it.”
Other winners in the first round for Pool A competitors included bareback rider Tim O’Connell with an 87 on Shadow Warrior; saddle bronc rider Leon Fountain was 86.5 on Business Girl; JC Mortensen was 84.5 in the bull riding; steer wrestler Dalton Massey continued his winning ways with 4.7-seconds run; two-time Calgary champion Lisa Lockhart was the fast barrel racer with a 17.58 second run.
Courtesy of PRCA