Hot and dry as it is on this dusty stretch of ranchland southeast of Pueblo, Kirsten Vold is thrilled to “just be at home” this summer with a few horses and her dog, Rocky.
“Spending a summer here is new to me,” she said as she relaxed in a shady garden haven her mother created outside the main ranch house. “There are so many summer things that people do that I’ve never done.”
That’s because she was always on the road, hauling bulls and broncs from one rodeo to the next for the Vold Rodeo Company that she ran for 28 years before selling it last year.
She recalled the frustration of being stuck in Colorado Renaissance Festival traffic near Larkspur numerous times over the years — this year she went to the festival for the first time.
Then to the Missouri Day Festival in nearby Fowler, where she and friends reveled in the simplicity of a pie-eating contest.
She paid for the Colorado State Parks pass on her vehicle so she could go — just for fun — to Lake Pueblo. She and a college roommate have booked a trip to Paris and Venice this fall.
“I want to see things I have never seen,” she said.
She did watch the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo on television from the comfort of her home. Maybe she’ll spend an afternoon at the Colorado State Fair Rodeo — the hometown rodeo that was put on by the Vold Rodeo Company for decades.
Vold loves rodeo, especially working with the animals, but she doesn’t miss being in the midst of it. She understands now why her dad started talking about selling the business three decades ago: Managing people and a business is tough.
The business has changed, too. Vold estimated that costs tripled over the last 10 years.
Increasingly, stock contractors and rodeo production companies have a wealthy owner or supplemental businesses to bring in extra money. Stock contractors provide animals for rodeos and production companies put on the show. Often, as in the case of the Vold Rodeo Company, they do both.
The Weld County-based Cervi Championship Rodeo company, for example, has producing oil wells, leases land to farmers and is working with a developer to build a golf resort to an unused portion of the Cervi family ranch, according to news reports.
“Owning a business this year is more expensive than it was last year. Being a stock contractor is no different,” the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association said in a statement.
“It is more expensive to transport animals and equipment, have land for your company and feed your livestock that you have to bring to the arena for rodeos, which includes bucking horses and bulls and steers and calves for the timed events.”
And yet, the PRCA said, it is often the work of the stock contractor and producer that makes or breaks a rodeo. The cowboys might be the stars, but the contractors are the backbone.
There are about 650 rodeos in the United States and Canada every year and the profit margins for the nearly 90 production companies that compete to run them is shrinking.
“When you’re losing money and you’re gone all the time, you begin to question what you’re doing,” Vold said.
A way of life
Rodeo, though, has been a part of Vold from day one. She was born in El Paso, Texas, while her parents, Harry and Karen Vold, were working a rodeo there.
Harry Vold, known as the Duke of the Chutes, had been connected to rodeo most of his life — first in Alberta, Canada, where he was born and in Colorado after moving to the Pueblo County ranch in 1955.
Karen Vold was the daughter of Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame clown Andy Womack. She was a trick rider and was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1978, when Kirsten was 5 years old. Kirsten would earn the honor herself in 2022.
Rodeo was not only her heritage but her lifestyle.
Kirsten Vold grew up on the road, traveling with her family and a tutor who also participated in the pageantry of rodeos. But when it was time for high school, she decided she wanted to attend school and enrolled in Pueblo County High School.
Then it was off to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, because it had a rodeo team. She left after a couple of years and landed back in Colorado, where she graduated in December 1996 from what was then the University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State University Pueblo) with a degree in communications.
She took her finals early to take a marketing job in Amarillo, Texas, with the company that held the apparel license for various professional rodeo organizations. It was there she “got a whiff of corporate America” and realized that wasn’t what she wanted.
At the same time, Harry Vold was talking about selling the stock contracting business and she was trying to talk him out of it. After six months in Amarillo, she returned and took over as foreman of the Vold Rodeo Company.
She was 24.
When her dad announced the switch to the crew, “a couple guys stormed out,” she said. They didn’t want to work for the “little girl” who’d grown up on the ranch.
The workers returned but when one stormed out a second time, she didn’t take him back. That was part of her steep learning curve on being a young female boss in a man’s world.
“I grew up in this business so it wasn’t weird for me,” she said.
She persevered and the company flourished, though she noted with a chuckle that she went head-to-head with her dad regularly as her role grew.
“It wasn’t what I planned to do for 28 years,” she said. “But a couple years become 10 years. I had a full life with it.”
This story previously appeared in the Colorado Sun.
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