CANADA’S UNMATCHED RANGELAND DERBY!

A glimpse into 100 years of gripping stories from the men, women and horses, who create chuckwagon racing. An excerpt from The Rangeland Derby, 100 Years of Chuckwagon Racing at the Calgary Stampede.

By Glen Mikkelsen

Straight as a wagon’s pole, the Calgary Stampede chuckwagon races are one of the planet’s most exhilarating contests. They are armrest-grabbing, sweat-forming, cardiac-arresting, did-you-see-that, electrifying. Since 1923, the rattling range wagons have awe-struck spectators.

You have your doubts? Check out these recounts from the past ten decades:

“Like the fearless charioteers of old, the chuckwagon drivers urged their racing teams to victory, skidding around curves at breath-taking speed, while spectators thrilled with excitement, and urged them on to greater daring with wild applause. “ 1928, Calgary Herald

“Then there are what Calgarians call the ‘chuck-wagon’ races. Actually, they are desperate things. A half dozen teams of four horses with what seem like ancient and very rickety

‘covered wagons’ stand side by side inside the arena track. As a gun barks out, the drivers and owners of these ‘chuck wagons’ must pick up their settlers’ effects – stoves, cooking utensils, etc. – turn their teams around, make for the track, dash round it. It is a case of every man for himself and woe betide him who gets into the way of the faster team behind him; a truly fearsome spectacle to a tenderfoot from the East.

“Yet Calgary likes it. Perhaps the liking is because it snatches some of the glamour of the past, it is a link with the old and perhaps otherwise, vanishing West.”

July 1934, Ottawa Journal

“Neck-and-neck finishes plus two wrecked wagons provided thrills galore…” 1945, Calgary Herald

“The world’s most unique horse race.” 1953, South American racing official

“As one prominent United States rodeo producer commented after seeing his first Calgary chuckwagon race event, ‘This is the greatest sports spectacle of our time,’ and his comment has been confirmed by thousands of fans all over the world.” 1956, Calgary Stampede Program

1968, Mrs. Ina Gilmore, Aberdeenshire, Scotland - a Calgary Stampede guest.

“These are the boys who put ‘stamp’ in Stampede!” 1961, British Movietone

“Everything explodes into action with the sound of a gunshot – they’re off! The pure thrill of the race itself would satisfy any spectator, but to complicate matters further, each wagon must do a figure eight around two barrels first. So violent, so swift is this maneuver that I watched two or three races before I could follow the action. To me, the wild rush onto the track, the rattling, sizzling Ben Hur speed of the wagons, the mad swirl of choking dust, the shouts of the drivers as they skillfully control their plunging teams through this bottleneck made the beginning of the race the high point and the end almost anticlimactic.” 1963, Sam

Savitt

Visiting sports columnist Jim Coleman wrote, “The Calgary Stampede is unique in the cultural, athletic, and drinking life of Canada. This is fortunate – because human flesh and blood couldn’t survive more than one annual folk festival of this type. If any Calgarians or visitors sleep during Stampede Week, it is one of the best-kept secrets since Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt made rendezvous in the North Atlantic. Local restaurants are featuring orange juice and Benzedrine tablets.

“The driver of a chuckwagon isn’t considered to be ready for the stern competition at the Calgary Stampede until he has suffered at least four compound fractures in training sessions. I went into the building where the drivers were assembled before Wednesday night’s races – it resembled the emergency ward at an orthopaedic hospital. If all the plaster-of-paris casts were stretched end to end, they would have reached from here to Tokyo.

“On Wednesday night, a team driven by Stan Walker hit a barrel as they careened out of the infield, onto the main track. The chuckwagon turned over in the deep mud and Stanley, true to the traditions of the sea, went down with his ship.

“I thought that they would send for scuba divers to bring up the bodies, but someone happened to notice air bubbles coming to the surface of the rich Alberta gumbo.” 1963, Calgary Herald

“I never realized it could be so exciting. Everything has been outstanding, but if I must select the best, I would have to say the chuckwagon races. It is this that will make it difficult for us when we return home. I don’t think our friends will believe most of it – you just have to see it for yourself!” 1968, Mrs. Ina Gilmore, Aberdeenshire, Scotland - a Calgary Stampede guest.

“Chuckwagon racing is a disease without a cure – as any horseman who’s witnessed one will tell you. It’s a race that is a test of great horsemanship. For the spectator who has seen one he is hooked for life, and for those riders, daring enough and able to compete, there is no thrill in the world that ever again will quite satisfy. The disease is communicable. Not too many realize that the top outriders and chuck-drivers are nearly all related. Possibly that explains the violent competitiveness of it all!” Summer 1970, My Golden West

“To see the wagons coming against a red sunset, under a pall of dust down the home stretch, is something never to be forgotten.” 1993, Andy Russell

“Chuckwagons: Part rodeo and part theatre of the absurd, the chucks as they are generally called, are the most talked about of all Stampede events. The danger and excitement are for real. However, the real excitement comes on the last night, when $50,000 in prize money is up for grabs. The rest of the time, the chucks are merely a matter of life and death.” 1996, Charles Frank, Calgary Herald

And finally, in 2005, Chris Turner wrote, “That’s why real, live rodeo is so refreshing: it’s decidedly underhyped – in fact, it’s kind of ridiculed in many circles – and yet it’s genuinely, heartracingly, holy-crap-that-chuckwagon’s-gonna-tip-over-and-killus-all, exciting.

“Not for nothing are the chuckwagon races the headlining act of the Stampede: this is one wild freaking ride. This is NASCAR meets Ben Hur, with Clint Eastwood directing. Get yourself a cheap rush ticket, muscle your way up close to the retaining fence and you’ll feel the sheer force of those charging horses as they come hard around the turn…