At 94, Cootamundra resident Bob Holder is known as the oldest competing rodeo rider in the world.
Story + Photos Ken Eastwood
In 80 years of competing in rodeos, 94-year-old Cootamundra fella Bob Holder has had some pretty wild rides. There was a bucking horse of the year called Satan, which none of the other pros could ride, and although Bob stopped rough riding four years previously, he jumped on it, aged 42, at Cootamundra Rodeo, and rode it to the bell. But Bob reckons there was only one horse that ever made him think twice about riding it – a horse called Meathook at Madison Square Garden in the USA, in 1959.
“I’m not afraid. I wouldn’t back down from anything at all,” he says. “But he’s the only one who ever made me think a bit. All the other riders said to me, ‘He’s no good that horse. You go home to Australia alive. Leave him alone’.”
Bob says Meathook was named because “a man looks like a bit of meat on a hook to that horse. He was a crazy horse. He was all over the place.”
But, clinging on like a wild moggy with claws embedded, in a style that would see him nicknamed the ‘Cootamundra cat’, Bob rode Meathook the full eight seconds. Unfortunately, he was disqualified for a technicality, but it was one of hundreds of rides that saw Bob’s fame spread here and overseas. Nine years ago, he was inducted into the Australian Professional Rodeo Association’s Hall of Fame at the Australian Rodeo Heritage Centre in Warwick, Qld.
Still competing as a ‘header’ in team roping, Bob says he “only” competes at 12 or 13 rodeos a year now, from Mount Isa, Qld, to southern Victoria.
This story excerpt is from issue #165
Outback Magazine: Feb/Mar 2026
