CBC SPORTS HIT RODEO CIRCUIT
Jim Bawden Prime Time
Toronto Star

CBC's flagship sports anthology, Sportsweekend, veers onto a new track tomorrow afternoon. Some time between 3 and 6, the show's regular hours, the emphasis will shift from live coverage of football and highlights of the royal Winter Fair's equestrian events.

Instead, executive producer Jim Thompson will offer a magazine feature that normally would not get prominent play. It's called Here's To The Cowboy and examines small town rodeos and riders with big-time ambitions.

The film is directed so expertly you'll stay tuned even if you don'
T like rodeos. The focus is on peripheral character; the haggard wife of an old-time champion can't recall when there wasn't a stranger around learning the tricks of the trade - even on her honeymoon she wasn't alone with her husband; a clown tells of diverting the bull's attention to save a fallen rider and says he's come close to severe injuries many times.

Director Paul Jay follows one young rider Tom Erickson, around the shabby circuit and profiles the kind of men who like bronco busting because it frees them from responsibility.

The milieu is so well captured you can almost taste the hot dogs. As a housewife from Erickson's home town of Innisfail, Alt., says, "They are all bowlegged and they smell like a horse."

This affectionate portrait of what the cowboys call "Goin' down the road" is the best possible way to inaugurate Sportsweekend's new policy.