This is cowboy Christmas

Rodeo time. First go round, ladies and gentleman. Nobody says: "Yeeeeeeeeehar!." To say "yeeeeeeeeeehar! when you are at the rodeo is like sitting in a fancy French restaurant kissing your bunched fingertips with your lips then letting your hand flower as you shout "ooooh la la!"

At the syntax happy National Finals Rodeo, the cowboys come to Vegas. Thousands of them. December in Vegas. This is cowboy Christmas. Men who wear cowboy hats and spurs without being in Village People, they cover the strip. They move their whole world here. Wives, horses and pick-up trucks. They sit in restaurants, drawling to each other with their hats on. They have southern drawl competitions in the hotels. They move around in mannerly groups, looking for good deals on beds and livestock. This is the Spring Show on steroids.

The woman in the media credentials office has never heard of The Irish Times but she shrugs and sets in train the credentials process anyway. "Strangest we ever come here had was Paris Match," she says and dispatches a cowboy about seven foot tall plus hat to show the way to the press room.

The press room is filled with the noise from the arena beyond. At night the cowboy world cheers some of the most extraordinary sporting deeds you could dream of. Working skills have evolved into strange and dangerous sports. National Finals Rodeo is 41 years old this year, the culmination of a year long series of events on rodeo circuits all over America. Some 700 rodeos offer about $4.5 million in prizemoney. Rodeo has made a world with it's own superstars and it's own codes.

Every day Ty Murray, the greatest cowboy who ever lived (and here we're not counting Doc Holliday, Shane, Gene Autrey, Wyatt Earp or Charlie Haughey) gets up, gets massaged, has lunch and heads down to the MGM Grand Hotel to sign autographs for folks.

He is pencil thin, just 30 years old and he once watched his friend Lane Frost die at the rodeo in Cheyenne Wyoming, having been gored by a bull with too much bump in him. Too much bump, too much vinegar too. Murray has been the All Round rodeo champ every time he has come to the finals and that's seven times in all.

Ty and Frost and a bunch of other cowboys were the new kids on the block 10 years ago when they burst onto the scene. The wolfpack they called them and they rode harder and braver then most all the cowboys anyone had seen before. Murray was the best of them and despite injuries the most enduring.

By 23 he had won his first million on the circuit.

Eight seconds it takes. One Mississipi, two mississippi and so on. Ty has one hand wrapped through a rope and tied to the beast, the other is high in the air and must not touch either Ty or the animal.

The gate opens and it's hell on hooves. The back of the animal bounces upwards. Ty Murray's back is parallel to the ground when the animals hindquarters hit it square on jerking him forward.

The front of the animal rears up. Ty is moved backward with such violence that it looks as if his arm will be ripped off.

He has suffered injuries which have robbed him of entire years.

"It's not been my greatest year," he says "but I went all out to win the bull riding title during the summer and I've left myself with a lot to do here. I'd normally ride bulls, bareback bronc and saddle bronc here. This week it's just been saddle bronc. So it's tough to win."

Yet he is the man they all talk about.

YOU want to see crazy. You've got to see Rob Kamikazee Kid Smets. Craziest of them all. Smets is a bullfighter.

Originally bullfighters were rodeo clowns, there to make people laugh, then their role evolved into distracting bulls and horses in order to protect fallen cowboys. Now they have their own competition.

Smets is in the ring in clown clothes. Him and the bull. The bull is the Sonny Liston of his species. Foul tempered, huge shouldered. Smets will be spending the next 70 seconds in his company.

Smets walks up to the bull, leaps out of the way pirouetting just as the bull attempts to gore him. The bull turns quickly. These bulls are bred to be quicker and more agile than the bull-riding bulls.

Smets Gets caught this time and is tossed against the perimeter railing with such force that you expect him to slump down dead. Other clowns distract the bull but Smets isn't done. He reassembles himself. Goes out there again. Gets hit once more, low on the leg this time. It sends him rolling in the dirt. He escapes, limping badly before the bull scoops him up again.

He comes around grabs one of the blue prop barrels and holds it on the ground between himself and the bull. The barrel is one of those old style beer barrels except it is painted blue. Smets tips it on it's rim a few times while the bull watches. He rolls the barrel on its side. Begins stepping backwards. In the audience they know this next step. They love this guy and they wish he would stop. Women and men shout, "No Rob, No."

"Dang it Rob, leave it be."

But Smets isn't done. The barrel lies sideways two yards in front of the bull and between Smets and the bull. Smets takes nine, 10 paces backwards as the place falls totally silent. Then astonishingly this skinny war-painted bag of bones charges the bull.

He sprints as best he can towards the horns, places one foot on the blue barrel and flies high onto the bulls back and down the other side.

Rob Smets limps from the arena for treatment. This is the bravest thing anyone will see all week.

"Jesus Rob." says the man behind. "Holy Jesus. I hope you are well."

Bareback bronc riding is one of the great traditions of rodeo. It's a tough job, like being in a car wreck every night. Deb Greenough is a consistent star. A 15-year career, a world championship, a family tradition . . .

"To start off I'm Deb Greenough from Red Lodge Montana and I was born and raised in Red Lodge Montana. All my life I've been a cowboy. Fortunately I was ranch raised. Gosh it's just a life I've been around and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

"As a professional rodeo cowboy and doing it for a living, I'm on the road better than 200 nights in the year. I ride over 170 bareback horses a year in competition. If I get a day off I just let sore muscles heal up.

"Rodeo has been in my family for generations. I'm a fourth generation rodeo rider. When I was a kid in Red Lodge I would rather be on a little bucking horse than playing with a basketball or a football.

"I can remember the first bareback horse I got on. What a thrill.

"In school. Lot of kids in junior high get on and hold on to them and they were holding on to them in the belly with their feet but I knew that I had to get me feet around his neck and that's where I stayed for the whole ride. Never moved them. Don't think I was ever scared. I was never forced into it so it was something I wanted to do.

"I consider just about any occupation out there is dangerous. You can be a construction worker and work on tall heights or you can ride bucking horses and be in danger there. This beats morning and evening traffic. Sitting in that traffic, hell that's more scary to me than anything.

"It looks bad sometimes what we do but listen I was in a plane crash. One of those deals. We all got out alive. A year later I flew over saw the wreckage of what we got out of. We were awful fortunate, if there was one little thing that day without any luck involved in it we'd be dead. We got through that one. It's a step in life. I had to get back into a plane to get on with life.

"Every day I have to get back on horses just to live life."

FRED WHITFIELD has a face like a bull and shoulders you could build houses on. He moves into the press room glowering, looking at some undetermined point beyond the press room. He has his jacket on and he's ready to go. The entire press room reads the signals precisely.

Except The Irish Times and a man in a cowboy hat and droopy moustache. These two approach Fred. Fred turns heel moving bullishly to the corridors of the building looking for an exit.

Droopy moustache has caused him offence sometime back in cowpoke county. The details are hard to gather as we sprint after him.

"Please Fred, warn't me" says Droopy Moustache.

"Sure looked like you," says Fred.

This little minuet continues all the way until Fred Whitfield finds the mercy of the night sky. All the while The Irish Times keeps interjecting with what in hindsight seems comic pathos.

"Fred, I'm from Ireland and I'm just doing a piece on life at the rodeo." This is the equivalent of being a persistent encyclopedia salesman during a marital bust-up over who slept with whose cousin at the wedding.

Fred reaches the door and turns to us in a way which makes The Irish Times and Droopy Moustache shrink cartoonishly.

"I'll do my talkin' out there on Sunday," he says.

And you nod. Common ground on the turf of the sports cliche.

Back in the press room people console droopy moustache. "Don't mean nothin'. Fred ain't talked to nobody in a week now. He's like that. Folks get like that sometimes, all you can do is pray for them."

They call him Moe and he has the letters of his nickname stitched into his glove so that the camera picks them up when he is tethering his hand to the animals back.

The animal he is on right now is built like a pick-up truck.

It can scarcely settle in the pen. The gate opens and the bull leaps out. 2,000lb of animal leaping and bucking in the air. Atop Mike Moore looks as if he is being tossed like a rag doll. Eight seconds is the longest time when you watch an animal perform such violence.

The hooter sounds, Moore is off the bull but his hand is caught in the tether. The bull is leaping and running still, the men in the clown faces are distracting him, Mike Moore is being dragged along at the whim of the beast. Maybe another 10 seconds of this awful drama unfolds. People gasping.

Finally Mike Moore gets free. Gets his first decent score of a tough week riding the bulls . . .

"I'm Mike Moore and I'm sore now. I grew up in Kankakee about 45 miles south of Chicago. I grew up out in the country kinda. We moved into there when I was in high school. Being a cowboy, well it was something I always wanted to do. My grandparents had horses and stuff like that. I just always wanted to be a cowboy.

"Nobody except for my family gave me a shot at it. A black kid from just outside Chicago who want's to be a cowboy? Who's going to listen? But they've always been supporting me. They've been here all week. I've been banged up bad since August, it's been a tough week, got a guy working on my groin everyday but they are here and that means a lot.

"This week I've been gettin' on the best bulls in the US and Canada. You have to be healthy to do that but I came here with this groin injury. Tonight, that wasn't a pretty ride at all but I haven't quit a bull this week and tonight it paid off for me.

"That was a herd ride. It isn't called scared what you feel up there, it's called excited. At the end when he was pulling me around I just wanted my hand back, just wanted to take care of my business and get out of there.

"How'd I get here? Mike Latting, the principle in my elementary school got me started rodeoing. He went to school in Casper, Wyoming, back in the 1970s and he said why don't you go check it out. I came down and checked the university out and I liked it and I got a rodeo scholarship. Went to Casper College and transferred to University of Wyoming. It's a big varsity sport.

"This is my second year on the pro's and it's turning out to be a good one. I go to the gym every now and then. I do a lot of visualisation.

"I rode bareback bronc for a year before I started riding bulls.

"I love the bareback horses but then I started riding bulls and I was pretty handy at it when I first started. Got on my first one, I was hooked. This is what I want to do.

"Do you know, rodeo isn't like all other sports, this is a big family. They took me in with open arms. A few people gave me a few problems, being black but by and large they took me in, like I belonged there and that's how it's been. A happy family."

THE exterior of the Excalibur Hotel is dressed up like a fairy castle. Inside the theme is Merry Ole England and every so often harlequins, wastrels, knaves, jackanapes and maidens make a theatrical parade through the casino.

The Excalibur's resident attraction for National Finals Rodeo week is Monty Roberts the horse whisperer who will demonstrate his whisperiness to crowds every day just after noon so long as the crowd surrenders $25 a head at the door. Your in touch with nature horse whisperer is nothing without an accountant.

Monty seems like a nice fellow and certainly the horses seem to like the sweet nothings he romances them with. He could be a lot more useful to society if he hung about in juvenile court perhaps, but who are we to judge. Ultimately though you can't look at Monty without thinking of his part in inspiring that godawful book and that godawful film. If horses could read they wouldn't put up with Monty's patter.

Blair Burk does a remarkable thing this Friday night. The calf is released into the arena. Blair chases it in on his horse. He lassoos the calf from 10 yards. Blair's horse stops dead. Blair jumps from his horse and sprints. Catches the calf. Tosses it in the air. Ties its two back legs to one front leg. Throws his hands in the air.

7.1 seconds. From start to finish. Walks back towards his horse, head down, hat still on. The arena goes crazy. Blair Burk ties the lead.

"I'M Blair Burk. I grew up on the rodeo. My dad was 18 times calf roping qualifier for these here finals so that was my life.

"We had a ranch style home in Oklahoma but we went to the rodeo mostly. My grandfather and grandparents ranched in Texas. This life is the only one we've known.

"At three years old Dad started me roping. I caught my first calf when I was three years old. I was riding a little pony and I roped him. I have been roping ever since. When I was eight I was strong enough to lift them and toss them to be tied.

"I went with Daddy since I could walk. Weeks old and I was being carried to the rodeo. We went all over the United States and Canada. Rodeo came first in our family and it's just been a great experience. The people, the places. There is nothing I would take in exchange for being in this rodeo family.

"I'm 26 now and I have been roping for 23 of those years. We work cattle on our ranches and this is a deal that's used every day in pastures, for veterinary medicine, for branding, all those things, on every ranch in the world. I've been to Australia, to Brazil, South America. They use the same work skills on the ranches as they do on the rodeos. That means something to me. This is something which grows out of the work people do. All those people sitting out there tonight, most of them know what it is to rope a calf."

YOU are reading this and Fred Whitfield is the world champion cowboy. After a series of calf roping world title wins, he's done enough to pull down the all round title. The first black cowboy to streak so high across the firmament. He has stepped up the pressure this year competing along the way in calf roping, steer wrestling and team roping to finish with $217,818.

Don't squat with your spurs on being a tenet of cowboy life, Fred isn't a guy to hang around. We know that on good days he boasts and laughs and on bad days he's thunder.

On Sunday last he told the world that it was an achievement to be a black champion in a mainly white sport. He wondered what his win would do for other African-American cowboys.

In the carpark after Fred Whitfield's coronation there are two basic types of vehicle queuing to leave. Flatbed pick-ups and stretch limos. It is limo gridlock. The headlights of one vehicle create silhouettes through the rear window of the vehicle on front.

Nothing but square shoulders and cowboy hats and people hollering in the night.