The All New Race For The Ultimate Crown In Cowboy Town

The 2016 world all-around race has been good watching, with mostly traditionally single-event guys doubling and even tripling down on events.

- Kendra Santos

What’s most unique about it, of course, is that without Trevor Brazile in the mix this is the first all-around title in recent memory that wasn’t all but sewn up before the run of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo presented by Polaris RANGER. That—and the fact that no one has qualified for the Finals in a second event—has added an extra element of intrigue to the NFR fan experience, for sure, and it’s shining a bright new light on some familiar faces.

The top five cowboys in contention for the all-around crown are Junior Nogueira, Josh Peek, Dustin Bird, Clay Smith and Russell Cardoza. Russell’s voluntarily removed himself from the all-around conversation by sticking with Bird at the Finals, simply because he can’t pass him. And with $26,231 go-rounds and the average paying $67,269 at this year’s $10 million NFR, it’d be foolish not to mention the rest of the top nine in this race, who include Clayton Hass, Caleb Smidt, Ryan Jarrett and Shay Carroll. Remember, nobody has two bullets at the Super Bowl, and there’s only $39,710 between leader-of-the-pack Nogueira and Carroll, who’s ninth.

Lucinei Nunes Nogueira Jr. stole my heart and a lot of others when he showed up from Brazil a couple years ago. There was a language barrier between us that reminded me of the early going of my friendship with bull riding great Adriano Moraes. I might have a Portuguese last name, but I don’t speak their native language. I did find some of my Spanish close enough to come in handy in bridging the gap, and that Junior—like Adriano and world tie-down roping leader Marcos Costa—being so sweet and eager to learn English made it easy to go out of my way to try and communicate with him. It says a lot about their manners that the first Portuguese word both Adriano and Junior taught me was “obligado,” which means thank you.