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The
Longhorn Pony Express
The members of the Longhorn Rodeo Express dazzle rodeo fans with their daring and dangerous gymnastics on horseback at the Longhorn World Championship Rodeo.
Some folks probably think that jumping out of a perfectly safe airplane with a parachute strapped to your back doesn't make any sense. Others call it sky diving. Some folks think jumping off a perfectly sound bridge with super sized rubber bands around your ankles just doesn't make any sense. Others call it bungee jumping. Some folks probably think that performing death defying stunts from the back of a horse galloping freely around a rodeo arena borders on being wacky. Members of the Longhorn Pony Express call it simply trick and fancy riding.
If ever there were an understatement, it's calling what these daredevils do simply trick and fancy riding. What they do amounts to nothing less than performing difficult and dangerous gymnastics using a hard-charging horse as their base of operations.
Members of the Longhorn Pony Express must put total and complete trust in a horse, with the rider's life hanging in the balance. It takes more than a modicum of trust in a horse for a rider to stand, arms fully extended upward, on the saddle of a galloping mount as it races along the unsure footing of the arena floor at the Longhorn World Championship Rodeo. That bond of trust is developed over years of practice, training coupled with simple love and affection for the talented horses they ride.
The skilled and talented people who comprise the Longhorn Pony Express carry on a tradition that covers more than three decades. They are an integral part of the total family entertainment package the Longhorn Rodeo presents in each city it visits. In fact, trick riding was a competitive rodeo event until about 50 years ago. The degree of strength, athletic ability and skill required of both horse and rider thinned the field of competitors and the contest had to be dropped from event agenda. The exhilaration of seeing a rider dragging from the rump of a horse, inches from its flashing hooves or catapulting from one side of the horse to the other remains even though those performing are now paid as contract artists.
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