SEARS TO COMPETE AT PONOKA STAMPEDE
June 25, 2009

World champion ladies barrel racer Lindsay Sears has recalled Martha from Texas to compete at the Ponoka Stampede June 25 in the morning slack performance.

“That’ll be nice,” she said of teaming up with her sorrel mare during the morning’s slack performance. “I’ll only have one turn to the left, so the only concern is trying not to hit my leg.”

Sears fractured the fibula in her left leg after it slammed into a partially closed gate at the Guy Weadick Memorial Pro Rodeo in High River, Alta. last weekend. The horse she was riding at the time, her eight-year-old palomino mare Hanky, wasn’t seriously injured in the incident, but is still recovering from the incident. Sears is determined the show must go on.

“The MRI showed some stuff that we didn’t know had happened, but it also showed that my knee is fine. What’s causing the pain in my knee is the swelling. There’s a bunch of fluid behind my knee cap but all the ligaments are fine,” she confirmed. “It just showed that it was not a clean break, that it basically smashed my fibula into several pieces, but they’re all in place.”

She was fitted with a brace and while it’s good for day-to-day, “I hated it,” Sears said about wearing it for riding.

But with a pinched nerve also in her knee, “the biggest concern the doctors have is if I were to hit it a barrel and re-injure that nerve, I might lose motion in my foot. So, basically, I’m getting a mold made to protect that part of my leg in case I hit a barrel it won’t damage the nerve.”

Still, Sears and Martha will have a little extra work cut out for them as they try to stay away from the barrels, but still wrap tightly enough around them to keep in the running for the fastest time of the seven-day rodeo in central Alberta.

“My knee is stiff so I can’t move my leg like I normally do, so hopefully she’ll feel that I’m not 100 per cent and help me out a little bit. Sometimes they know. I’m hoping she knows, which I’m sure she does. She’s petrified of my crutches. She thinks they’re going to eat her,” Sears laughed.

If all goes well, she might compete at the Williams Lake Stampede, where she’s scheduled to ride on June 26, the Stampede’s opening day, and at the Airdrie Pro Rodeo on June 30. But the keyword here really is “might.”

“The main concern is having to sit on a plane because I’ll have to fly from Williams Lake to Reno for the short go. The doctors don’t want me sitting and not moving my leg for fear of blood clots with all the cramping I have in my leg, so I have to be careful. I might be narrowing down my July 4th rodeos by quite a bit,” explained Sears, who currently leads the pack at the Reno Rodeo, known as the “Wildest, Richest, Rodeo in the West”.

The Ponoka Stampede, which attracts over 60,000 spectators each year, is celebrating its 73rd year this summer. All the excitement gets underway on June 25 at 1 p.m.

The 83rd annual Williams Lake Stampede kicks off June 26 and runs through June 29. Professional rodeo clown Dennis Halstead will be providing the laughs, while nearly 400 contestants will provide all the thundering rodeo action.

The Airdrie Pro Rodeo starts June 27 and wraps up on Canada Day. This is the Airdrie Pro Rodeo’s 42nd annual event, and their 15th as a pro rodeo. It’s also a stop on the Wrangler Canadian Rodeo Tour.

In fact, the rodeos in Airdrie, Williams Lake and Ponoka all count towards the Tour, and mark the beginning of “Cowboy Christmas” north of the border, the time of year affectionately called so by cowboys and cowgirls because of all the rodeos taking place and the tremendous amount of money to be won. It's an extremely important time of year in the quest to make it to the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR) and Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR), because a good run during Cowboy Christmas can potentially make or break a competitor’s position in the standings at the year's end.