Trick riders no strangers to danger

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/03/2019 (1867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dangling precariously off the side of a horse is all in a day’s work for Keely Wamsteeker.

The trick rider got into the sometimes dangerous, highly thrilling sport after watching a show when she was growing up.

“They were hanging off the horses, and I was a fearless little girl,” Wamsteeker said. “I was like, ‘I want to do that.’”

Wamsteeker is in Brandon this week with fellow trick rider Shelby Thue to perform at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.

They’ll perform stunts for the audience, including hanging off the horse sideways and hanging upside down. It’s a show people shouldn’t miss, she said.

“It’s not every day you see a girl hanging upside down on a horse.”

They both grew up in remote parts of Canada — Thue in southern Saskatchewan and Wamsteeker in northern Alberta. The clinics they were able to get to were few and far between where they lived, Thue said, so they both mainly taught themselves from YouTube videos.

“(When we did get a chance to go) we would learn how to properly get in and out of as many tricks as we possibly could absorb, and then go home, practise it and watch a lot of YouTube videos over and over again,” Thue said.

The pair met each other at a trick riding competition in 2014 where they competed against each other, and later became friends. They were both a little alienated, Thue said, as most of the competitors were girls coming from central Alberta.

“She came out of the bush and I come out off the hills (and) we kind of latched on to each other,” she said.

They’ve been teaming up off and on ever since to practise their trick riding together.

This will be their first performance in Brandon, and they’re both looking forward to it. It’s probably the biggest show they’re going to book this year.

“People are going to be thrilled,” Thue said. “A lot of the tricks we do people are going to be really amazed by because you don’t expect it.”

Thue’s passion for trick riding started at a young age. Her father was on a rodeo committee, and one evening when she was three years old he brought home a promotional video of the sport.

“My mom tells me that’s all I wanted to watch for months,” she said. “Ever since then, I started standing up on my rocking horses and on my ponies, and I’ve always climbed all over the place.”

When Thue was nine years old she got her first lesson, and two years after that she got a proper saddle.

Trick riding saddles are designed much differently than typical western saddles, she said, with more safety features, the proper handles, and a longer horn.

The first trick she learned was called a hippodrome stand, where the rider stands upright with feet strapped in on the galloping horse.

With the many hours of performing stunts, Thue has had a couple of bad falls. Her saddle broke on one occasion, and she landed underneath her horse. Luckily, her horse didn’t hit her, she said, but it was still one of the scariest falls of her life.

“I was pretty banged up and bruised after that,” Thue said.

Despite the dangers, it’s a sport that keeps her coming back.

“The adrenalin, the crowds, the glitter, the speed … it’s all great,” she said.

» mverge@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @Melverge5