The 103rd edition of the National Western Stock Show, Rodeo & Horse Show will include its regular cast of cowboys, cattle, clowns and competition.
The show begins Saturday and runs daily through Jan. 25 at the 100-acre complex along Interstate 70 and Brighton Boulevard.
In addition to one of the nation’s premier rodeos, the stock show features 375 vendors, many handing out free souvenirs and samples, along with hundreds of educational exhibits for kids.
The stock show is promoted as the “Super Bowl of Cattle Shows,” with more than 15,000 animals, including more than 20 breeds of cattle.
New this year is Western Heritage Week, Jan. 19 to 25, in the stockyards, featuring the show’s first stock-dog sale, the first all-breeds bull sale and the first Chuckwagon Celebrity Beef Cook-off.
The National Western Events Center exhibits some of the country’s top horses and riders, including competitions and shows for quarter horses, paint horses, draft horses and mules, as well as equestrian events for hunters, jumpers, Arabians, American saddlebreds, Appaloosas and Morgan horses.
The top ranch horses in the world will compete, for the second year at the stock show, for the title of world champion.
On Tuesday at noon, the stock show parade comes to downtown Denver, when cowboys drive longhorn cattle from Union Station down 17th Street to the state Capitol, leading rodeo queens and dignitaries.
The grand marshal is famed cowboy poet and humorist Baxter Black, a former Adams County veterinarian.
Competitions for all manner of livestock — including cattle, pigs, horses, chickens, stock dogs, bison, llamas — rival competitions that feature humans, including sheep shearing, fiddle- playing, karaoke singing and team penning.
Gates are open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekends, except on the final day, when doors close at 6 p.m.
The performances of showman Buffalo Bill are remembered at the Great American Wild West Show, set for Jan. 17 at 5 p.m. and Jan. 18 at 4 p.m. The show includes a stagecoach holdup, trick roper J.W. Stoker, dance-hall girls and a tribute to American Indians. The $14 ticket includes admission to the rest of the stock show.
Grounds admission is $7 on weekdays and $10 on weekends for those 12 and older, except on Jan. 17 to Jan. 19, when adult admission is $12.
Children’s admission is $2 Monday through Friday, and $3 Saturday, Sunday and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Grounds admission does not include admission to one of 42 shows, which range in price from $8 to $100, but a ticket to those events includes a grounds admission.
Ticketed events include the Mexican Rodeo, the Professional Bull Riders Chute-Out, the Pro Rodeo, the Martin Luther King Jr. African-American Heritage Rodeo, Dancing Horses, the Wild West Show, Freestyle Reining, Grand Prix, Super Dogs and the draft horse shows.
Professional Rodeo is a big draw to the National Western, usually selling out morning, afternoon and evening events.
This year’s show includes 10 evening sessions, 10 matinee shows and three morning rodeos.
That’s in addition to the Mexican Rodeo Extravaganza on Saturday evening at 7:30 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
Black cowboys will compete Jan. 19 at 6 p.m. in the Martin Luther King Jr. African-American Heritage Rodeo.
The stock show includes dozens of events that are free to children, including feeding a calf or lamb with FFA members; petting ponies, rabbits and poultry in Children’s Ranchland; as well as learning the tricks of a rodeo clown’s trade and competing in “stick horse rodeos” in the Ames Activity Center tent.
For 11 consecutive years, attendance has topped 600,000, according to stock show records.
Last year, 673,449 people turned out, second only to the National Western’s 100th run in 2006, when 726,972 attended.
In 2007, a series of blizzards couldn’t turn back the crowds, as 649,637 visited, the third-highest turnout.
Attendance grows on the weekends, especially as the show nears its end each year.
The final Saturday of last year’s show made history, pulling in the largest single-day crowd of 68,610, beating the previous one-day attendance of 68,357 in 1999.
