Kelly Sutherland has been competing in chuckwagon for 49 years, winning Calgary Stampede’s Rangeland Derby a record 12 times and finished second nine times.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
One more round, says the man who has won it, done it all. One last go-round from Ponoka to Strathmore, Alta., over to Dawson Creek, B.C., then back to Alberta and Rocky Mountain House.
It will be a nice way to finish a career, he says of 2017 while readying his horses for the here and now of his 49th season in the reins-snapping, dirt-flinging, hoof-pounding world of professional chuckwagon racing. And if the sport had a Mount Rushmore-like tribute for those who made a difference, Kelly Sutherland's face would be up there, a trademark eagle feather tucked into his cowboy hat.
Through six decades, the native of Grande Prairie, Alta., has been chuckwagon's finest ambassador. He once did a command performance for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who wanted to see what this chuckwagon thing was all about. Plus – and this is the Mount Rushmore clincher – he's won the Calgary Stampede's Rangeland Derby a record 12 times and finished second nine times.
All in all, it has been an illustrious career for Sutherland, who understands he can run his horses this year and at the 2017 Stampede, but no longer after that. The mandatory retirement age is 65, and Sutherland's plans for his last two seasons are as doable as they are succinct: race hard, race to win, enjoy the long goodbye. He likes to think he's earned it. Others agree.
"I have a lot of respect for Kelly," says wagon driver Jason Glass, a Stampede winner in 2013 who discovered early in his career that watching Sutherland on the track and in the stables was required learning. "He's worked hard at staying in the sport and being competitive. For some guys, that's getting tougher to do."
Like so many others in rodeo and chuckwagon racing, Sutherland was born into the family business and that meant learning how to handle horses before having them hitched together to pull a wagon. In his first race at 16, Sutherland won in Dawson Creek. He turned pro a year later and won again, this time in Manitoba. After that, he was hooked.
Racing chucks and competing at the Stampede quickly became an addiction. To fit in with the older drivers, Sutherland drank with them after the races were done. By the summer of 1995, the phrase "one more round" had only one connotation.
He was a full-blown alcoholic and he needed help.
"I was drinking eight hours a day," Sutherland says of just how hard he had fallen. "People and friends would talk to me about it. They would have two beers and I'd have 24. They'd say, 'Stop after two.' I couldn't stop."
Asked if he raced while drunk, Sutherland says no. His binges on beer and Scotch were always after the night's racing was completed. It afforded him enough time to wake up the next morning and begin regaining his sobriety.
But when he woke up one morning in a hotel room not remembering what had happened or how he got back to his room only to see his vehicle parked outside, a sign that he had driven himself, Sutherland got help. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Since Aug. 24, 1995, he has been as dry as tumbleweed.
"I raced against Kelly a lot," retired chuckwagon legend Tom Glass says. "And I never saw it [Sutherland's drinking affecting his driving]. He was pretty wild on the track when he was 19 but that was because his dad had given him some good horses and Kelly wasn't able to handle that kind of horse power."
He learned quickly, rising through the ranks, beating the veterans until he was at the top. From there, Sutherland didn't just enjoy the view; he used his successes to enable the younger drivers, giving them advice and information so they could rise up, too.
These days, Sutherland doesn't like what he's seeing. He calls it "an exodus of a lot of good young drivers" who can't win enough to stay in the sport. It has to do with economics and how Alberta has been rocked by plunging oil prices, which has forced businesses to cut costs and slash sponsorships, which in turn has reduced funds for the drivers.
At its annual pre-Stampede event, the 2016 tarp auction for companies to team up with the drivers, $2.3-million was paid out in sponsorships/advertisements. As good as that sounded, it was a drop of $480,000 compared with the year before.
As for the Rangeland Derby, the winner of the final race gets $100,000. It's a wonderful payout but it doesn't go as far as it once did. Not when the largest slice of cash goes to feeding and grooming the horses, with some drivers having brought eight to Calgary to race and rest during the 10 days of galloping.
"Everyone knows we're sitting on a great sport," Jason Glass says. "But it's getting so costly to keep it going. I'd say 80 to 90 per cent of the guys are having trouble making this work [financially]."
Sutherland wants to make this year work to set up 2017 and his farewell tour. When he steps aside, all the attention will swing to his brother Kirk and the next generation of Sutherland drivers. That, says the 12-time Stampede winner, is how it should be. He made his mark, now it's someone else's turn to take the reins, snap them hard and watch the dirt fly.