National Finals Rodeo

Bareback rider Kelly Timberman competes Sunday on the final day of the 46th annual National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Timberman placed fifth in the 10th go-round, enough to earn his first world championship buckle. Trevor Brazile, who won the best all-around title, waves to the crowd during the awards ceremony.

Photo by Craig L. Moran. Billy Etbauer contributed to one of the greatest moments of the National Finals Rodeo's 20 years in Las Vegas when he and brothers Robert and Dan qualified for the event in 1989. No trio of brothers had done it before in the same event.

The 41-year-old concluded the NFR's second decade at the Thomas & Mack Center on Sunday in a manner that can only add to his lore. Etbauer could have played it safe in the final round when all he had to do was stay on his horse to win his fifth Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association saddle bronc riding world championship. But the South Dakota native drew this year's world championship horse and scored 93 points on Kesler's Cool Alley Dip.

That won the go-round in front of a crowd of 17,769 and tied the arena record he set last year. "What a horse to have in the 10th round," said Etbauer, who finished the year with $222,591. "Everything just came together."

Also crowned as world champions were: Trevor Brazile (Decatur, Texas), all-around; Kelly Timberman (Mills, Wyo.), bareback riding; Luke Branquinho (Los Alamos, Calif.), steer wrestling; Speed Williams and Rich Skelton (both of Llanos, Texas), team roping; Monty Lewis (Hereford, Texas), calf roping; Kelly Kaminski (Bellville, Texas), barrel racing; and Dustin Elliott (Tecumseh, Neb.), bull riding. Williams and Skelton set a PRCA record with their eighth straight title and Brazile won his third all-around in a row.

It was Kaminski's first world title after finishing second the past two years in her only other NFR appearances. Timberman, Lewis and Elliott won gold buckles in their NFR rookie seasons. It was Etbauer's fourth go-round win in the 10-day event. He saved his best for last, though he might have been more conservative and utilized a "safety up" strategy in rodeo parlance.

"I just can't seem to do that," he said, with a big grin and tears on his cheeks. "I don't know if I could do that if I wanted to ... I just go at him and hope it all comes together." Etbauer said he lost hold of a stirrup -- not the best thing to do on such a rank horse that bucked him near the end of his 8-second ride. "I didn't hear the whistle," he said. "All I could see was that my stirrup wasn't there and I went out the back. Then I was just trying to get my bearings so I could get up." The best he could recall, it was the 10th time he has won the final round in 16 straight NFR appearances.

He came into the NFR fifth in the world standings with $104,847, and added $117,745 over the past 10 days, the most ever in the NFR by a saddle bronc rider. He finished $46,000 ahead of Cody Demoss of Crowville, La. While Etbauer produced drama with his record-setting ride, it was nothing to match what Williams and Skelton were experiencing. The team roping world championship came down to the last two pairs of ropers.

It looked like the champions' reign would end when Skelton, the heeler, missed his first throw and the team needed 20.3 seconds to rope its steer. But the last duo with a chance to catch them -- David Key of Caldwell, Texas, and Clay O'Brien Cooper of Glen Rose, Texas -- also had a subpar effort. Key, the header, missed the steer's head on his first throw and the team's 15.1-second effort didn't place it high enough in the round to catch the champs.

"I figured if David and Clay caught their steer we'd be in trouble," Skelton said. "I never saw what they did. I was just thinking I had cost us the whole deal." Williams finished $6,000 ahead of Clay Tryan of Billings, Mont., and Skelton ended the year $3,400 ahead of Michael Jones of Stephenville, Texas.

Tryan and Jones did not rope together in the Finals. The eight-time champs began the NFR fourth in the standings, lower than their usual pre-Las Vegas ranking. "I started out to win one (world title) and now we have eight," Skelton said. "This just proves that if you're having trouble during the year but can get here, there's enough money (at stake) that you have a legitimate chance to win."

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