{"id":67501,"date":"2017-06-09T09:57:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T15:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/stars-shine-in-ute-mountain-roundup-rodeos-opening-night\/"},"modified":"2017-06-09T15:57:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T15:57:10","slug":"stars-shine-in-ute-mountain-roundup-rodeos-opening-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/stars-shine-in-ute-mountain-roundup-rodeos-opening-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Stars shine in Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo\u2019s opening night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ty
Ty Wallace holds on tight in the bull riding contest at the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo opened Wednesday night with an exciting array of fireworks, a stirring singing of \u201cGod Bless America\u201d and thrilling rides by some of rodeo\u2019s biggest stars.<\/p>\n

Bull rider Ty Wallace, ranked No. 3 in the world, created fireworks of his own.<\/p>\n

The Colbran native sat in the shoots as the first six bull riders were bucked off before climbing aboard a bull named Gale Force and bringing the crowd to its feet with a dizzying ride that resulted in a score of 77.00.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the first time that I\u2019ve been here to the pro rodeo, and these guys have been good to me,\u201d Wallace said. For a small-town rodeo, they\u2019ve done a really good job. I had a good little bull, a young bull that was kind of out of line for a minute, but he spun, and it worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the other well-known stars who provided standout performances was Corona, New Mexico, resident Taos Muncy, who currently sits 16th in the world standings for the saddle bronc event and has won $1.4 million in his career.<\/p>\n

Perched atop a bucking horse with a distinct kick and an unnatural rhythm that would confound less-experienced riders, Muncy stayed aboard and earned an evening-best score of 79.<\/p>\n

In the tie-down roping event, Albuquerque resident Seth Hall\u2019s time of 9.7 seconds placed him at the top of the leaderboard. Nick Guy of Sparta, Wisconsin, put forth the best steer wrestling performance of the night with a time of 4.1 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was here last year, and I got the same time,\u201d said Guy, who is ranked No. 5 steer wrestler in the world. \u201cThe arena conditions are always good here, it\u2019s a nice big arena, the ground is good, the steers are usually good, and it\u2019s a great little rodeo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other highlights from the evening included a 17.60-second barrel race from Jessie Telford of Caldwell, Idaho, and two scary moments for bull rider Dalan Duncan, who rode three times after his first two bulls of the evening tripped and fell coming out of the shoot.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of the evening\u2019s events, several competitors signed autographs outside of the arena much to the delight of young fans, who eagerly handed posters to smiling cowboys and cowgirls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to set a good example for younger kids because I remember growing up and looking up to guys who were where I\u2019m at in my career,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cIf I can make a kid\u2019s dream come true and give them some confidence, I enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the first night of the Ute Mountain Roundup Rodeo is now in the books, local fans can still catch all of the excitement during two more nights of nonstop action, which starts at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well-known names top leaderboard after exciting night of nonstop action<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,937,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-67501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-rodeo","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67501"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=67501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}