EDMONTON – Alan Dacyk has been a cowboy since he was a kid.
Growing up on a farm in northern Alberta, he used to play rodeo with his cousins and the neighbour kids.
After his first rodeo, riding steers at the Eureka River event, he was smitten with the rough and tumble sport, said Dacyk during the Canadian Finals Rodeo where he returned to defend his title as 2005 bareback champion.
“Any day money I made went to rodeo equipment,” said Dacyk of Worsley. He said he didn’t have a natural gift for riding steers, bulls or horses, but he had tenacity.
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“People would say ‘why don’t you try something else,’ and I’d just try harder.”
“I was a hard headed little fart. When I get backed into a corner that’s when I get better.”
That stubbornness took him to college in Montana on a rodeo scholarship where he honed his bull riding skills. He never rode in bareback events until he was 20. For three years he travelled to rodeos and competed in bareback and bull riding. A recurring groin injury forced him to choose between the two rodeo events.
“I chose bareback riding because I had a bit more talent,” said Dacyk. “I figure bareback riders have got a little longer career than bull riders.”
It takes a lot of work to make it to the Canadian Finals Rodeo, the pinnacle of Canadian rodeo. This year Dacyk competed in 85 to 90 rodeos to win a berth at the finals. He began the season in January and drove or flew across the United States and Canada to compete in rodeos each week.
The truck he won at last year’s finals had 37 kilometres on it. Eleven months later it has 111,000 km. It’s not uncommon for Dacyk to rise at 4 a.m. to head to the next rodeo.
“There’s a lot of glory being a professional cowboy, but there’s a lot of behind the scenes,” he said.
After this year’s rodeo, Dacyk plans to get a job on a pipeline crew to make money to buy a property near Calgary. He plans to rejoin the circuit in April.
Dacyk hoped to keep his bareback title, but an injury during the event took him out of contention.
