Officials Expect Fair to Set Attendance Record

Blessed with sunshine and record attendance, the 53rd annual Valley Fair & Rodeo ended Sunday with a day devoted to Mexican culture, including a rodeole event and a best-tasting salsa competition thrown in for good measure.

Organizers expected this year’s four-day fair attendance to top 53,000, last year’s record. The larger crowds were anticipated because fair officials offered free admission on Thursday to war veterans, senior citizens and fifth- and sixth-graders. On Sunday, the organizers of the event at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Griffith Park also added a third rodeo event for the first time.

As usual the main attraction was the rodeo arena, where a trick roper, bucking bulls and a race between two, four-horse chariots enthralled the crowd.

Rodeo owner Cotton Rosser sat atop a spotted stallion named Roscoe, once owned by former state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren.

“Dan Lungren used to ride him all the time,” said Rosser, sitting in his monogrammed saddle wearing a white cowboy hat. “I took him back when he didn’t get to be governor.”

Rosser said he has been involved with one rodeo circuit or another for more than 40 years and that the competition gets more keen every year.

“Before, rodeo riding was a hobby for ranch hands,” he said, tipping his hat back a bit. “Now it’s a sport. These cowboys are athletes.”

They’re also a little bit crazy, said rodeo judge Fred Church, 58, a former rodeo star himself.

“It’s really hard to explain what it is about getting on farm animals,” he said. “It takes skill and practice, but it also takes a whole lot of ‘try’ “--hence that old saying about getting back in the saddle.

Jon Johnson won’t be slipping back into the saddle for quite some time. The 29-year-old Norco, Calif., resident was thrown from his horse Sunday and injured for the second time in his three-year bronc-riding career.

“I do it for the fun of it--son-of-a-gun it hurts!” said Johnson through gritted teeth. Sitting behind the rodeo office with a pack of ice on his busted left leg, he described the mishap: “The bronco threw me off after about two seconds; my foot got caught in the saddle. I just got over a collarbone.”

Johnson, who works for a plumbing supply company, had the unfortunate distinction of being the second rodeo casualty of the fair--the first was a rider thrown and stomped last week by a bull. The rider’s jaw was fractured.

But however hot people’s taste buds got, there were no casualties during the fair’s first salsa competition, which will become an annual event. More than 13 entrants competed in hot and mild categories. The winner of the mild category was a salsa made with guava, mango and jalepeno peppers and served with vanilla ice cream and Italian wafers. Not exactly traditional, but it did the trick.

Among the other nontraditional parts of the fair was 6-foot-2 performer Laura Drane. Dressed in a leather bra top and pants and armed with a broadsword, the 39-year-old was with her similarly clad friends who make up the “Have Sword, Will Travel” theatrical sword-fighting troupe. The performers, many of whom have taken fencing and sword-fighting classes together, created the troupe three months ago.

An engineering technician by day, Drane said her alter ego is Skyia, a Xena-like barbarian warrior wielding a longbow.

“When I ask for time to do this, my employer is very considerate,” she said.

Vinny and Nora Rickwood of Valley Village strolled the midway with their year-old son, Sammy. Nora Rickwood, a Texas native, said the horses and bulls reminded her of home. Vinny Rickwood, who was born in London, said the fair didn’t look much like England, but that he was happy for a chance to stroll about with a beer for the first time since coming to the New World.

“It’s lovely to be able walk around with a brew,” he said. “It’s so restrictive here you can’t drink anywhere.”