An Olympic Protest
For the general public, the 2002 Winter Olympics were born amidst allegations of corruption and bribery. For animal welfare groups, Salt Lake City's winning bid to host the games brought strenuous attempts to stop rodeo events that were to be include din the Olympic arts festival as an example of Western culture and "sport."
Best Friends Sanctuary News (Kanab, UT)
By Julie Richard
"The Olympics should be about peace, unity, and humanity," says Sean Diener, co-founder of Utah Animal Rights Coalition (UARC). "We don't want the games to be tainted by something as barbaric as the rodeo."
Olympiads themselves agree. Gold medalist figure skater Scott Hamilton, now an NBC sports commentator, wrote a letter to the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee asking that the event be withdrawn from the calendar. Nathanial Mills, the elected representative of the U.S. speed skating team, pledged to do all that he could to stop the event and wrote letters to other celebrated athletes to round up support. Marv Levy, the ex-coach of the Buffalo Bills, lent his name. All to no avail.
From the beginning, Mitt Romney, head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC), defended the decision to include the rodeo as part of the Olympics arts festival. He claimed the event was an inherent aspect of Utah's culture and the Western heritage – which is the same argument that's used to perpetuate other cruel sports like bullfighting and cockfighting.
After an initial meeting with the UARC and other animal welfare representatives, Romney seemed to throw out a bone, offering to consider canceling the show if they could secure two percent of the population's signature on a petition. (While the games are an international event, and $342 million of federal taxpayer money flowed in to Salt Lake City for the event, Romney only considered accepting Utah residents on the petition).
"He was trying to prove that everyone loves the rodeo," says Diener. "He didn't think we would get the signatures, but we did. So when we handed the petitions in, the SLOC said it was too late: they already had contractual agreements with the rodeo.
After, a local news station took a pool and actually around 39 percent of Utah citizens thought it should be banned."
SHARK and The Tiger
Romney may have had no intention of honoring his promises, but animal welfare watchdogs had every intention of following through with theirs. Steve Hindi is one of those heavily involved in focusing attention on the rodeo. A former hunter who abandoned the practice when he saw the cruelty of events like the annual Hegins pigeon shoot in Pennsylvania (which he helped stop), Hindi formed SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness), to help bring an end to some of the worst abuses of animals.
Hindi gathered a coalition of activists from across Europe and took the protest to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Switzerland. Once again, the buck was passed. No one, it seems, wanted to step in for the animals.
Hindi is soft-spoken and precise in his language, and he doesn't fall into the trap of exaggeration or getting overemotional. "Whether the rodeo happens or not, the Olympic people have something that they're going to have to deal with. There are other animal issues involved in the Olympics that are not going to be overlooked anymore. We've met with the Salt Lake Olympic Committee, and we've met with the International head of the U.S. Olympic Committee. "We've tried to reach Sandra Baldwin, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and I have never seen such bureaucratic corruption and insensitivity. Their charter talks about peace, humanity, ethics, and sportsmanship, but when really comes down to it, the Olympics are all about corporate interests. Chevrolet owns the torch – it's all about corporate advertisement for whoever wants to pay. I'm not against business, and I'm not against advertising, but if they're going to include animal abuse in it, somebody's going to get a good kick in the …"
So Hindi made sure that the people cashing in on the event would feel just a little of the animals' pain. Having obtained to animals at a rodeo, Hindi followed the route of the Olympic torch in a high-tech mobile van dubbed The Tiger. It's outfitted with gigantic TV screens on the side that project video footage for the whole world to see. He didn't break a single law, but that didn't prevent the Olympic Committee form having the police in one state detail him for over an hour to let the torch get ahead of him. Regardless, where the torch went, Hindi followed. And in Salt Lake City, Hindi was planning to have in prowling the games to draw attention to the plight of rodeo animals and bring crowds to the protests at the site.
Other groups joined the fray, too. PETA put up a billboard protesting the event directly across from the venue and planned some publicity stunts to focus media attention on the problem.
Up to the last minute, the coalition of animal groups fought to change the course of the rodeo. If they couldn't get the event banned outright, they focused attention on some of the more pain-inducing aspects of the show.
"After they wouldn't cancel the rodeo, we tried to get them at least to ban calf roping," said Diener. But they played politics up to the end. Romney appeared to be trying to make some concessions, telling Diener he would try to ban that event. But Diener says he realized there wasn't ever going to be a concession when he saw a letter that head been written on behalf of Romney by the head of the cultural festival, wondering of the Professional Rodeo Championship Association (PRCA) might consider canceling calf roping, but adding that "we would understand if you say no." Not the most forceful way one could pose a request.
No Gold Medals
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee, trying to turn down the heat being generated by animal welfare groups around the world, announced that no gold medals, real or imitation, would be awarded to rodeo contestants. With their dream now gone of rodeo performers being elevated to the level of Olympians, the PRCA then defiantly proclaimed that calf roping would most definitely be included in the show.
Some people argued that it might be for the best for the rodeo to go on and for people to see for themselves what it's actually like. Hindi disagrees. "That is like saying that if someone is raping a woman, then maybe we should videotape and televise3 it so that everybody could see how horrible rape is, and we could stop it from happening."
In any case, Diener adds, when the rodeo is televised, it's also sanitized so the public doesn't get to see what really happens. He cites an incident where a mare was forced to buck at the rodeo's National Finals in Las Vegas. She bucked with such force that she broke her back and subsequently died. "The 15-year-old mare was paralyzed," Diener recalls. "But people watching ESPN coverage only saw the rider get bucked off. Then suddenly the crowd was silent. It was eerie, but nothing was said on camera to explain. There is a seven-second delay, so ESPN just didn't show what was happening. We've written letters protesting the irresponsible reporting. But ESPN hasn't responded. They have a contract with the PRCA, and the PRCA controls all the coverage of the rodeo and what is shown."
A spokesman for ESPN said the "discuss editorial decisions on the most appropriate way to report on the health of injured animals." Asked if cutting out the footage of an animal being killed during a rodeo isn't dishonest reporting, he said, "I don't know anything about that."
So the rodeo was set to be part of the Olympics. But the animal welfare groups were set too. The Utah Animal Rights Coalition was panning banner drops over highway underpasses and protests at the opening and closing ceremonies and all three rodeos. Hindi's Tiger Truck was se to prowl the city. PETA was ready with some news-grabbing demonstrations. And people around the globe are finding their way to the Web Site to register their opposition.
Diener feels hopeful that the steps he and others are taking will ultimately make a difference.
"The rodeo has been put into a whole new category now," he says. "It's not accepted anymore as a typical cultural event. It's now a controversial cultural event. I'm very confident that a rodeo will never again be involved with the Olympics. And the IOC will think twice before having any other event associated with the Olympics that exploits or abuses animals. A lot of attention has been brought to this, and the Olympic Committee is going to feel the pressure. And we're going to continue drawing attention to it after the Olympics. We hope that in the next five years, people will be embarrassed to even be at a rodeo."
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