120th Raymond Stampede a success

By Lethbridge Herald on July 4, 2022.

Herald photo by JUSTIN SEWARD Raymond bullrider Kaydunn Henry tries to hold on during the bullriding at the Raymond Stampede on Saturday. Unfortuantely, Henry could not pull off a victory for the hometown crowd as he recorded no time.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The 120th installment of the Raymond Stampede went on without a hitch and attracted large crowds over the Friday and Saturday of the long weekend.

Perhaps one major reason was the return of the pro rodeo after a 43-year hiatus.

“The contestants, a lot of them have been here before working their way up through the amateur ranks,” said Raymond Stampede president Robert Heggie.

“But it’s the ones that hadn’t been here before said, ‘Where has this rodeo been all the time? This is a very good, well-run event. We will be back.’”

Overall, the weekend went well.

“I think it went very well,” said Heggie.

“We were very well attended. We really hit it hard on the media to promote the professional rodeo coming back to Raymond and people listened.”

There were 325 contestants from the three prairie provinces and into the  United States.

“But most of them were Canadians that showed up,” said Heggie.

“There were some steer wrestlers out of  New Mexico and Oklahoma, (a) calf roper out of Oklahoma, a past National Finals Rodeo qualifier — quite a mixed bag — but mostly from Canada. Past Canadian champion (and) past Calgary Stampede champion, Cody Cassidy, was here in the steer wrestling. We had good contestants here, really qualified.”

The town embraces this event every Canada Day long weekend.

“Well our guy that was parking cars for us this year said we had a very wide variety of people show up,” he said.

“There was lots of U.S.A  plates, there was a lot of out-of-province plates that showed up and that’s all you can really go by unless you know the people that are coming. With the border being opened back up, we knew that we were going to get our Canadians that are possibly living in the south coming home for the Canada Day celebration because it’s always been huge in Raymond.”

The unofficial results saw Wheatland County’s Ethan Schultz win the bull riding ,Tate and Kagan Schmidt tieing for first place in the Team Roping, Dona won the Ladies Barrel Racing, Kahl Wasilow won the Steer Riding, Chance Barrass took home the Saddle Bronc Riding title, Chett Deitz took home the bareback crown, Clayton Smith won the Tie-Down Roping, Stephen Culling  won the Steer Wrestling category and  Bradi Whiteside conquered the Break Away Roping

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