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the Woman's Barrel Racing Association, WBRA, to bring barrel racing in-house. Of course the PRCA has a history of allowing women to compete against men in all events. It had always seemed to me and all other male barrel racers to simply be a matter of time when the PRCA would bring barrel racing in-house and allow men to compete. It made financial since.

So you can see how stunned male barrel racers were when the PRCA created this new organization, the WPRA, to perpetuate the exclusion of men from rodeo barrel racing. The issue is so divisive one need to simply log onto one of the many barrel racing forums on websites like www.barrelhorseworld.com or www.barrelhorse.com and post an article about men barrel racing. The response is hostile and threatening. People respond that their husbands and boyfriends regularly beat up male barrel racers behind the horse trailers. As has been the case through out the last 50-100 years, rural America has always been the last to embrace change and the first to result in violence and hostility to protect their claims and views of how the world should be. Barrel racing is no different.

In the PRCA today, a gentleman whose 22 year-old son has been particularly vocal about competing in rodeos as a barrel racer has been threatened that he would loose his job if his son does not stop pushing the issue. This young man is a talented rider whose mother competes in the WPRA and WBRA rodeo circuit. She shared with me the taunts and harassment her son has experienced and his amazing ability to withstand and persevere despite the almost hopelessness of him never realizing his dream of competing in the National Finals Rodeo. He travels with his parents all across the country barrel racing at open barrel races despite the discrimination he faces. Today about 5% of all barrel racers are male.

Though we are small in number, we are a growing group and have some of barrel racing's top trainers and income earners. In fact, the person who has won the most money barrel racing in the past decade is Troy Crumrine with winning's over two million dollars.

You can see the stakes for money and fame are real in barrel racing and the crowning event of barrel racing that leads to the biggest and best title, the best sponsors, the best professional recognition, and the largest paycheck is the National Finals Rodeo. Cowboy barrel racers are excluded due to tradition. A cowboy tradition that has no roots in real history and is kept in place for no real benefit

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