Heart attack no laughing matter for top rodeo clown
Published Wednesday July 8th, 2009
CALGARY - Life isn't exactly a barrel of laughs for a rodeo clown and one of the most famous names in the sport came face-to-face with his own mortality just months before coming to this year's Calgary Stampede.
Flint Rasmussen is perhaps the most famous rodeo clown or "rodeo barrelman" in the sport of bull-riding.
Long associated with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Rasmussen earned the title of clown of the year for eight consecutive years and won "man in the can" honors seven times.
The son of a rodeo announcer, he was doing about 100 shows a year until March 11 of this year.
"I had a heart attack. A pretty good one," he sighs, leaning back against a wall in the clown change room on the Stampede grounds.
"I was working out at home and had a legitimate, all out heart attack and had one artery completely and another one 95 per cent blocked. They put two stents in and the recovery stuff."
"Imagine that - 41 years old, 155 pounds, work out every day and almost croaked over."
Four months later, Rasmussen is back on the job but his high-energy performance has been dialed back a bit.
"I wear a heart-rate monitor in the arena and you'll see me go pretty hard, and then I stop and let my heart rate come back down. I think probably the rest of my life I won't be able to completely punish myself like I have in the past."
With his trademark straw cowboy hat, baggy shorts, sports jersey and running shoes, he looks more like a college jock than a circus clown.
Rasmussen does wear traditional face paint - sans the big red nose - and his performance involves dancing, physical comedy and pure entertainment.
Quite a departure for a man who spent two years teaching math and history, as well as coaching high school football and track in Montana.
"I had actually worked my way through college doing this. That was my summer job," Rasmussen explains. "I decided to give up the teaching for a couple of years and give it a try and that was in 1993 so it worked out OK."
The primary job of the rodeo clown has been to protect a bull rider after he dismounts or is bucked off the angry animal.
Typically, there are two free-roaming bullfighters and a rodeo clown who is known as the barrelman. The barrelman uses a large padded barrel that he can jump in and out of easily.
"People say, 'oh, that's dangerous. You save the cowboys.' (But) see those guys? That's them. That's their job," Rasmussen says as he points to two bullfighters sitting nearby.
"I am the guy in the barrel and . . . I am hired for my entertainment qualities."
Rodeo clowning has been profitable for Rasmussen, who figures he can probably keep up the pace for another five years. It has also allowed him to live his life-long dream of being an entertainer. Learning how to dance and how to do comedy came from a couple of unlikely sources.
"I was in eighth grade and there was a show on TV - I think it was 'Salute to Motown.' I'll never forget it. I had heard about this Michael Jackson and he moonwalked across the stage. I started that day and said, 'I gotta know how to do that.' I was enthralled."
"As for comedy, I always come back to Howie Mandel. He had the greatest stand-up show in the late '80s or '90s. It was so cool because it was obvious it wasn't scripted. The great comedians never told jokes - they did comedy."
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