Bob Holder, also known as 'the Cootamundra Cat', won his first event in 1945 when he was 14. Now 92, he rides in an arena that was named in his honour.
Holder fell in love with wild horses and cattle as a boy and says he's "been trying to tame them ever since".
Holder has been a professional rider since the 1940s, and Cootamundra Rodeo president Mick Axsentieff says "there's not a cowboy or cowgirl, Australia-wide, worldwide, who doesn't know Bob Holder. It's time to recognise him".Holder's love of riding and the land developed while he sat on his father's knee.
"They'd say, 'what school did you go to?' I'd say 'Stock-grad Grammar' because I learned more there than I would at school," he said.The cut-off age was 16 but a forged letter from his mum fooled the organisers and kicked off an eight-decade love affair with the sport." went a bit cranky about it, but everything was sorted out — I won about three pound … it would be the value of five, six weeks' wages.
He was the first Australian to ever win money in professional rodeo in the US, he said, taking home around $290 from the annual world championships held in Madison Square Garden in New York in 1959.After years of working with chemical sprays in dusty environments he developed interstitial lung disease, a scarring of the lungs.He then overcame adult respiratory distress syndrome, a rare condition that stops the lungs from exchanging oxygen properly.