Angela Ganter is a certified rodeo legend. A member of the Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame, she’s a world champion barrel racer — which, if you didn’t know, is a rodeo competition pioneered by women, where riders on horseback speed through a course lined with barrels.
It’s grown to be one of the most popular competitions on the rodeo circuit, and Ganter’s been doing it since she was a kid. Now in her 60s, Ganter is still running barrels, even after surviving a debilitating case of breast cancer in 2010.
It took her seven years and multiple rounds of the so-called “red devil” chemo treatment, which doctors told her would essentially have to kill almost everything inside her so that she could live.
Ganter is the subject of a new docudrama called “Outriding the Devil,” which will screen at Pollock Cinemas in Tempe on April 25.
The Show spoke with her recently about the origins of her love of rodeo and living much of her life on horseback.
Full conversation
ANGELA GANTER: Honestly, I've always said that I think it was just kind of inherited in me. My mom was not a horse person and then my dad was city boy and played football. And so here I came and, you know, wanted horses at an early age and wanted to ride and wanted to go to the ranch and all that.
And they were just kind of dumbfounded. And I will say, you know, they were kind of at a loss. And everybody used to tell them that I would grow out of it. And I think they're still, they were still waiting on that.
SAM DINGMAN: I would say so. I would say so.
GANTER: I say that in the movie, too. I think that the love of the ranching and farming and horses and all of that, it's just kind of bred into people. I don't think it's something that's a learned skill, honestly.
DINGMAN: Yes. But it's very interesting as you were pointing out, that in your family, at least when it comes to your parents, it kind of skipped a generation a little bit and cropped up in you.
But we also see in the film that you had this kind of mentorship relationship with, I believe it was your Uncle Charlie, is that right? Your mom's brother.
GANTER: Yes.
DINGMAN: Who introduced you to a lot of this world. Do you think he recognized something in you?
GANTER: You know, I don't really know. I spent a lot of time out there at my grandmother's and stuff out in New Mexico. And Charlie, he had three older brothers that I never got to meet. They all passed away before, you know, I was around. And so Charlie was kind of the only one left that was running the ranch.
And he had a son that wasn't interested in any of that. So he kind of, I was kind of, you know, the, the child he didn't have and that wanted to do all that. And I think Charlie just kind of embraced that, you know, when I was young. And then we just kind of got along.
DINGMAN: There's an amazing scene in the movie. It's a reenactment of a scene from your youth where Charlie takes you out early in the morning, right. It's like 4:30 in the morning, I think. He comes and he picks you up and he takes you way out into the countryside. And I believe it's gonna be your first roundup. You're gonna go out and round up the cattle on your own for the first time.
And he basically hands you a compass and he says, all right, you're gonna ride for like an hour and a half that way. And eventually you'll just see them and you'll know what to do. And then he drives off and leaves you there.
Do you remember what went through your mind when that happened in real life?
GANTER: Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's just kind of what the, you know, the cowboys were dropped off in different areas and you rode till you saw cows and calves, and you rode for hours and hours and hours and never saw anything. And I thought, well, this is a joke. You know, there's no cows out here.
So I do, I do remember that. And then I do wish in the movie that they could have, you know, been able to reenact, you know, coming over, over the hill and down into where the cattle were driven. And that scene whenever they top that hill and you look down and there's cattle down there and there's other people that have made it with cattle.
And so it was a pretty prideful moment. That's, you know, one little thing in the movie. I've had multiple people say, well, you know, they didn't really show if you found a cow at the end, did you? And I was like, yes, I did.
DINGMAN: Right. Yeah, I guess the, the finding of the cow is assumed, I suppose.
GANTER: I just think it was God's gift to me to be able to do this life and, and share in being just so down to Earth with actually the Earth and the world, and especially with what the world's becoming today and being able to just, you know, sit on a mountaintop and enjoy an animal and a sense of connection with them.
And I think that we just have such a love that a lot of people don't understand it or get it. I mean, it's unconditional. I mean, they have absolutely no judgment about them. And so, you know, they just believe in you and believe in what you can do for them. And so it's just a great life. I think so many people today just don't know what it is to just be at peace.
DINGMAN: Well, can I ask you, Angela, was that sense that you get from being on a horse, was that part of what kept you going when you got your diagnosis and you had to go through these rounds of what is known as "red devil" chemotherapy, one of the most intense forms of it?
GANTER: No, not at all. Whenever I got sick, my daughter had already lost her dad when she was 8. And so I was raising her by myself. So the entire seven years I fought this 100% was just for my daughter. And yes, she still rode horses, and I probably to some degree, you know, live vicariously running the horses and stuff through her, but the horses had probably very little in bringing me through it.
It was 100% a fight to be here at the end of the day for her.
DINGMAN: I appreciate that you brought up the passing of your husband because one of the things that seems like a theme throughout this film and really throughout the story of your life in this is this idea that death is kind of lurking around the corner.
I apologize. I don't mean to be morbid, but you have to beat cancer in order to keep doing this. Your husband passes away when he's very young. You mentioned the fact that your other uncles besides Charlie had died young.
It seems like there is this determination to, I mean, not to be corny, but outrun that.
GANTER: Yeah. I think that, like I told my daughter when I didn't want to do all this, she, and I said, it's kind of embarrassing to me, to be honest. And I said, it's, it's just not. It's not me. I'm not a. I'm not that person that, you know, wants to go around and give inspiring talks or anything like that.
And she said, well, I think the problem is, is that we. It's just normal for us. I just think it, like I said, I go back to just kind of God given gifts to us to. To love this life and love this world. It's, you know, kind of, kind of going away.
And I think that's what the movie tried to portray is how much family is in rodeo. When you, when you go to a rodeo and you're in the back and you're around the people in their trucks and their trailers and their kids and it's all family. You know, you might see somebody's kid that, you know, running, you know, down the road in the back and you just grab it and keep it till you find its parents later.
DINGMAN: That brings me to, I think, my last question for you, Angela, which is, you say actually at the very beginning of the movie that you have this really deep respect and love for the people in the rodeo world, their values and their morals. What does that mean for you?
GANTER: It means everything for me to be involved in a sport or in a life, in a lifestyle that you never have to wake up thinking that, you know, your child can't go outside the trailer and and be at the rodeo grounds or you're driving down the road and you have a flat and a truck and trailer pulls up behind you to stop and help change the flat.
It is a peace of mind knowing that you're a part of a group of, of people that you know absolutely would help anyone or do anyone, anything for anyone. And everybody's very God fearing and genuine and have some of the highest standard morals.
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