How are Penalties Counted In Rodeo Roping?

Video Transcript

"This is Randall Powell with Expert Village and in this clip I am going to talk to you about penalties and barriers in team roping. In roping, you have barriers in the boxes that when you start you have to give the steer a head start and it is a legal head start. In old days they used to have ropes that stretch across the front of the boxes. They had the rope tied around the steers neck and when the steer ran out to his legal head start, the rope would just break off and your horse could go. If your horse hit the rope or broke the barrier before you were out, you were charged a 10 second penalty. Now days it is all electronic and they do it by electronic eyes and penalties for the barriers are now only 5 seconds and they also have heel barriers now days too. So both ends have to give the steer a legal head start before their horse can leave and start chasing the steer down the pen. The penalties you can acquire while team roping is the basically on just the heelers. If you just rope one back leg instead of two, it is a 5 second penalty and that is about the only thing other than a barrier that can give you any added time when you run. Team roping is a timed event so if you have a barrier to start out with, you are already working with a 5 second penalty and if you have a leg on top of that, that is a 10 second penalty on your run. So it is really good to get out legally. You don't break the barriers and try to rope 2 feet of course every time you can. That is information on penalties and barriers in team roping. "