Collie rodeo champion Freya Tomasini now has another award to add to her growing collection – the Australian Rookie All Round Cowgirl.
Ms Tomasini travelled to Tamworth in New South Wales last month for the Australian Bushmen’s Campdraft and Rodeo Association National Finals and came home with the Graham Keir Memorial award for winning the All Round Rookie Cowgirl division.
Ms Tomasini said she was proud of her achievement and that girls from New South Wales put up ‘fierce competition’.
“It was definitely an eye-opening experience,” she said.
“I’d been working hard all year for it.
“There’s some fierce competition over in New South Wales. The girls over there do training everyday, where we’re lucky enough to do it once a week.”
Ms Tomasini said it was the first time she had qualified for the competition and that she competed against the top rodeo riders in Australia in the steer undecorating and breakaway roping events.
The breakaway roping event sees competitors race to chase down a calf and throw a rope around its neck like a lasso with the fastest time winning, while the steer undecorating event sees competitors race against the clock to remove a ribbon from between the shoulders of a charging steer.
Both events are competed on horseback.
Ms Tomasini said that although she had been riding horses her whole life, she only started competing in rodeo events relatively recently.
“I’ve only been doing it for the past four years, so not really that long at all,” she said.
“But I’ve been riding my whole life and I campdrafted when I was younger.
“Friends got me into [rodeo] and I started going with them, then I started doing it with my own horses and that’s all I do now.”
Ms Tomasini said she wouldn’t have a long time for her achievement to settle in with the new rodeo season just around the corner.
“The new season starts back up in two or three weeks, so every second or third week I’ll be travelling around the state,” she said.
