For Binion Cervi, life at the National Western Stock Show started when he was still in his baby boy Wranglers.
“It’s in the blood,” he said.
For the past 40 years, the Cervi family has been the stock contractor at the National Western, providing all the horses, bulls, steers, broncos and calves for the rodeos that take place during the show. This year will be no different, except that Binion, all of 22 years old, will be in charge following his father’s retirement.
That means he is responsible for combing the continent to find 1,000 worthy animals – the nastier and wilier the better. All the while, he is still going to college.
“They’ve really raised the bar in the quality of it,” said Binion, whose family has ranches outside Roggin and near Sterling. “It’s a sport where I feel the fans understand a lot more the quality of animals. The crowd understands a good bucking horse and a good bull better than they used to.”
The challenge of the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo, as it enters its 101st year this January, is to bridge the gap between the agricultural and urban worlds.
It is still a family affair, with its boots firmly planted in the agricultural world. And yet, it is also striving to offer new surprises, youthful thrills and a more adrenaline-charged atmosphere to appeal to those who learned about bull riding from watching TV and not from watching their daddies.
After 100 years of mastering livestock shows, animal sales, farm equipment displays and the like, the National Western is now out to conquer an entirely different frontier: production values.
“We took a long look at how we’re doing things,” said Marvin Witt, the stock show’s vice president of operations. “Our production wasn’t good enough.”
In the past years, leading up to the stock show’s 100th anniversary blowout in 2006, National Western officials made a host of changes to the 23 pro rodeos the show hosts each year. Bringing in gnarlier animals was only part of it. They also played more amped-up music, put on more laser and light shows and even painted the chute doors.
Simultaneously, they added more ticketed events – things like miniature horse demonstrations, dog stunt shows and something called “Dancing Horses,” in which horse and rider move to music – all in the hopes of attracting city slickers to go along with the usual cowpokes.
That modern balance is encapsulated neatly on the cover of the stock show’s program this year, where there is a picture of a bull with a ring through its septum. “Leather and piercings,” the text reads. “Yep, they’re true rockstars alright.”
Witt said the modern National Western is an event for the whole family.
“It’s more than a cattle show, and it’s more than a horse show,” Witt said. “It’s an entertainment event for 16 days.”
The added appeal has paid off. Attendance has grown steadily over the past decade. More than 700,000 people took in the 100th anniversary show last year.
What does the National Western plan to do for an encore this year? More of the same.
“People loved last year’s show, and it was a success,” Witt said. “This is what we call a fine-tuning year, making things work better, flow better.”
One change that is being put in place this year seeks to address a lingering black eye from last year’s show.
Following last year’s junior market lamb show, several lambs were suspected of being injected with a foreign substance to make them appear more muscular.
In the past year, Witt said, stock show officials reaffirmed their commitment against doping. The show already performs drug tests on winning animals. And instead of all the money going directly to the competitor, some of the money now will go to scholarship funds, which decreases the incentive for cheating, officials said.
Other than the controversy, visitors this year can expect to see all the familiar stock show staples. The rodeos, exhibitors and stockyards will all be there, as well as the funnel cakes, cowboy church services and petting zoos.
“The diversity is really important, especially in a large community,” said Jerry Dunn, who has exhibited her llamas at the show every year since 1984. “The Denver community is not an agricultural community, but in bringing in all these different animals, it teaches people about livestock.”
Others, though, say the stock show’s broadening reach hasn’t hurt what made it special to the agricultural community in the first place: A chance to escape the farm or ranch in the winter and meet lots of folks like yourself.
“It’s always fun to go to Denver,” said Pete Carmichael, who’s been coming to the stock show from his ranch in South Dakota for nearly three decades. “It’s such a big deal with so many things going on. You never know who you’re going to meet in Denver. It’s kind of old home days.”
Words like that bring a smile to Witt’s face. But in his years at the stock show, he has come up with a different explanation for the event’s popularity.
“The West has always had nostalgia,” he said. “And I think one small time each year, everyone wants to be a cowboy.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
