Bucking in the blood: For these, gay rodeo is an all-around lifestyle

“After several years,” Pool said, “I had a friend kinda push me – he said if you like this, you need to give back. So I got in the politics side.” Pool was president of the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association the year the Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo moved from its original home in Aurora to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, and was Mr. CGRA in 2004 and Mr. IGRA in 2005, a position in which he raised funds for the rodeo’s ties to local communities.

“All the money we make goes back to the community,” said Pool, who is still the chair of the Wayne Jaknio scholarship fund.

Still, all insisted, there’s just something about that animal – and the ride.

“I’m of an age when we grew up with a lot of drug options,” Pool said of his bull riding days. “And nothing compares with that. It’s total adrenaline.”

It’s a sentiment that resonates with all the die-hards; the sport calls them back. Rodeo’s hard to quit.

“You know you’re a bull rider when, that moment you hit the ground, you get back up and want to do it again,” Duran said.

One of the things she loves about the gay rodeo, Duran said, is that women can compete in all the events – in straight rodeos that’s not always allowed, and even when it is there’s resistance. 

When she was a beginner a straight man who often competed in the gay rodeo “took me under his wing,” Duran said, he gave her pointers and said he knew of places she could get better at riding bulls – a practice arena. But it wasn’t one where it was a good thing to be a woman – or gay.

“I went to one, and got on this bull,” she said, “Still a novice, the fourth or fifth time I’d been riding.”

She fell; “the bull stamped on my leg pretty good,” Duran said. And when she got back to the stands, she heard a man’s voice – a stranger, and she didn’t know who – say, in a condescending tone, “welcome to bull riding, bitch.”

At the straight rodeos, Duran said, “Every time you’re at a new rodeo you have to prove yourself all over again. You fall off, and people say ‘that’s why women shouldn’t ride bulls.’ But I got back on again, and again. And when I came off and got back on the shoots guys were slapping me on the back saying ‘I can’t believe you got back on.’ When you can do that, you can lift the whole world over your head.”