Cruel Event Headed For The Last Roundup Some Tradition You Don’t Have To Be A Radical To Loathe Such Predictable Destruction.

They call it the “World Famous Suicide Race” but riders aren’t the ones who are dying at the rate of about one a year. If they were, the Omak Stampede’s headline event would be history already.

It’s the horses that die, and people who think the 62-year-old event should be scrubbed run smack into Old West traditionalism that scorns them as animal-rights wimps.

If you’ve never seen the race, picture 20 horses and riders gathered atop a 120-foot-high embankment (about the equivalent of Spokane’s U.S. Courthouse), then plunging down a cliff face six times steeper than the steepest pitch of South Freya, then splashing directly into the rushing waters of a 345-foot-wide river that must be swum and escaped up a steep, slippery bank before the dash to the finish line.

State Rep. Cathy McMorris of Colville once voted against a bill to make animal cruelty a felony because she considered it a threat to the suicide race.

“We do everything in our power to make it as safe as we can,” Cactus Jack Miller, race director, told a reporter in 1987. “If there’s anything more we can do, we’ll do it.”

True, some safety improvements have been made, especially since pressure to end the event was stepped up about a decade ago, and usually after a serious accident. The race began requiring a swimming test for horses, for example, after two of them drowned during practice runs in 1992. In a practice run this year, a horse suffered a leg injury that caused it to be euthanized. Two other horses were euthanized after last year’s race.

You don’t have to be a radical who splatters fur coats with paint to loathe such predictable destruction in the name of entertainment, cowboy virility and tradition.

Tradition? Rodeo is tradition. It replicates ranching chores integral to our Western heritage - roping, riding, bronc-busting. But not forcing horses over a 120-foot cliff.

Like it or not, the suicide race’s days are numbered. Several sponsors, including Wrangler Jeans, have dropped their backing. Others will follow. To reduce horse injuries, race organizers started to cut back the number of times the event would run this year but they relented when riders protested. If Stampede officials really want to do all they can in the name of safety, they won’t just scale the suicide race back in 1998, they’ll end it.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Abide this remnant of Old West spirit

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