Chuckwagons Are Loaded, With Money, in Calgary Stampede : Rangeland Derby Has Become One of Biggest Events in Canadian Rodeo

A horn sounds and pandemonium breaks loose.

Sixteen outriders, holding their horses’ reins in their teeth, toss imitation camp stoves and tent poles into four chuckwagons, then mount up as the four-horse teams lunge forward. Each circles its assigned barrels before charging around the track with its four outriders in frantic pursuit--32 horses and four wagons hell-bent for leather.

It’s another heat of the Calgary Stampede’s Rangeland Derby, the Indy 500 of chuckwagon racing.

How quaint, you say? Cranky old Gabby Hayes always played the role. Dadrat the dadratted, goldang, bushwackin’ sidewinder, Gabby couldn’t gum his way through this one.

Mix the “Ben Hur” chariot race with the Indians chasing John Wayne across the plains in “Stagecoach,” and you have an idea of what chuckwagon racing is.

The 19th-Century origins were impromptu races of the cook-tent covered wagons from the prairie into some nearby town after a long day on the range, but the races are not exhibitions. At stake is $299,550 in prize money, including $50,000 in the winner-take-all final for the four teams with the best accumulated times through nine nights of heats.

The winner this year was Buddy Bensmiller of Dewberry, Alberta, with all four wagons less than three-quarters of a second apart after one lap around the 5/8-mile Stampede track.

Dave Lewis, 52, a one-eyed driver from Grand Prairie, Alberta, won last year, after Dallas Dorchester, 42, of Falun, Alberta, was disqualified for being over the line when the horn sounded.

“Eight inches,” Dorchester said. “I just jumped ahead before the horn went, eh? I knew I was over. I thought they might give me the benefit of the doubt, seein’ as how I was pulling back.”

With a shrug, he figures it cost him $65,000 overall, including the use of a new pickup truck for a year. That’s a few years’ hay crop for most of the competitors, but Dorchester doesn’t blame it on his lead horse.

“I blame it more on the crowd,” he said. “We pulled in (to the starting line), the crowd just roared and he jumped. I’ve got the same (lead) horse back. I don’t hold it against him.”

And nobody called Lewis’ victory a fluke. He had won six of his previous nine heats, and ran well enough in others to collect another $25,000 in “day money.”

This year, when he wasn’t running as well, he said, “If things don’t pick up, the truck is gone.”

Lewis didn’t reach the final this year. So long, truck. Dorchester finished fourth. Easy come, easy go.

Typically, cowboys aren’t whiners. They don’t waste time and energy cursing their bad luck. They take what comes and go on to the next go-round.

And among modern-day athletes, chuckwagon racers would never be described as overpaid or over-pampered. Most are middle-aged products of the western Canadian plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Take Orville Strandquist.

“You takes your chances,” he said. “There’s no guarantee of anything. No pension. Nothing.”

Strandquist, from Stettler, Alberta, is a wiry 69. He’s been racing wagons since 1941 and has no plans to retire.

“I like rodeo,” Strandquist said as several of his grandchildren played around his motorhome. “I rode bulls here in ’37.”

He also worked as an outrider for other wagon drivers until five years ago, and not many years ago drove wagons in two races a night and was an outrider in the seven others. He competed against the grandfathers of some of his current rivals.

“The ones I used to run with all quit,” Strandquist said. “So I’m runnin’ with the young ‘uns now.”

Strandquist says it isn’t the same as it used to be--in competition, safety and especially not in money.

The Calgary Stampede rodeo was born in 1912 but struggled until a trick roper named Guy Weadick incorporated chuckwagon races into the competition in ’23. Even now, the rodeo events are held during the day, the wagon races at night, and Strandquist says it’s plain to see what carries the show.

“It was something to get 50, 60 dollars day money. It’s just been the last few years (the money) got big.

“We’re happy to get it, but look at the stands in the daytime and then at night. If it wasn’t for the wagons, rodeo couldn’t pay its own way.”

Money doesn’t represent the only change over the years. The sport has become reasonably safe only in the last couple of years, since a series of spectacular accidents in the ’86 Stampede killed 11 horses, with footage on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” outraging animal lovers everywhere.

An outrider was trampled and killed in races at Cheyenne’s Frontier Days two years ago. The wagon drivers don’t wear seat belts.

But nowadays judges watch competitors closely and impose penalty seconds for interference and other infractions. The stoves the outriders throw into the wagon and the barrels they circle at the start must be collapsible. The stoves are stowed inside the wagon, not on a tailgate hanging off the rear end where a following horse can step on one--which precipitated the worst ’86 pileup at Calgary.

“With the crap we’ve had over that, the rules have really been tightened up,” said Tom Glass, 40, of High River, Alberta. “But some of the rules are good, like stove racks up inside the wagons.

“We bang and crash a lot. You can take spokes out of each others’ wagons. It’s when the horses get involved that you don’t like it.”

Dorchester said, “The judges lay it on you if you even touch anybody. If you bump a guy pretty hard, you get five seconds, which takes a lot of running to make up.”

The latest regulation is for drug testing--for drivers as well as horses.

“Geez,” Dorchester said. “Most of us have never even seen a stick of marijuana. Most of us are old men.”

But Lewis, who lost an eye several years ago when a truck tire blew up in his face, said it’s difficult to make it completely safe.

“When you’re runnin’ a race, there’s 32 head out there.”

The four outriders are responsible for loading the “camp gear” at the start and must then mount and finish within 125 feet of their wagons to avoid a time penalty.

It’s wild and woolly but, Strandquist says, it’s nothing like the old days.

“We used to run with steel barrels. There used to be some real wrecks. We was in Red Deer one time when I hit a steel barrel and flipped ‘er and broke my back. Tommy Dorchester (Dallas’ father) flipped, too, and went to the hospital for a while.”

The elder Dorchester drove until he was 71.

“I don’t feel a guy should be doin’ it at that age,” his son said.

But with the exception of Edgar Baptiste of Cando, Saskatchewan, Strandquist said, the current drivers are less skilled, especially in handling the teams around the barrels at the start.

“They don’t turn near as fast as they used to. Baptiste is out-turning everybody, but he’d just be an average guy 30 years ago.

“They were better drivers then, by far. They were livin’ with the horses. Lot of these guys never pick up a line except to come to a show. Same with the outriders. They’re truck drivers, farmers.”

Glass is an exception. Several years ago he got into movies by providing stock and wagons, then started doing stunts and has worked as a double for actor Kirk Douglas several times. He also is a two-time Stampede winner and defending champion of the World Professional Chuckwagon Assn.

His grandfather drove in the first Calgary races in ‘23, followed by his father, as Glass hopes he’ll be followed by his son Jason--the fourth generation--in the ’90 Stampede. “My dad taught me, like I’ll teach Jason, to take care of the horses,” Glass said. “You get what you give ‘em.”

Lately, Glass hasn’t been getting much, struggling through the Stampede in a season-long slump.

But his status is such that the Calgary Herald, which publishes a daily special section on the Stampede, bid $30,000 to sponsor his rig and advertise on his canvas, same as Indy cars. That was second only to the $36,000 that Petro Canada paid for Kelly Sutherland. The Stampede promoters deduct 20% and the drivers keep the rest.

The average sponsorships for the 36 entries this year were more than $21,000, almost double those of ’88. In these parts, at least, chuckwagon racing is booming.

Lewis is one of the most independent in a field of independent spirits. He might do better but declines to compete on either the WPCA or the National Professional Chuckwagon Assn. circuits--preferring to race only at Calgary, on one of six special invitations extended apart from the automatic entries extended to the top 15 in the two associations.

The problem started at Calgary in ’82 when Lewis refused to kick back 10% of his winnings--$2,000--to the WPCA because the WPCA wasn’t sanctioning the event. He has remained suspended since, a fact that doesn’t seem to bother him a lot.

“When (the Stampede) quits givin’ me an invitation, I’ll quit drivin’,” he said.

Strandquist might never quit. His wife travels the circuit with him. “We got a little farm,” he said. “But I’m gonna keep goin’ for a few years, anyway.”

Asked why his original peers have all packed it in, Strandquist explained: “Old age.”