BORDER closures will not stop the Mount Isa Mines Rodeo from going ahead in August, with competitor nominations already in the hundreds.
The event, which will run from August 12 to 15, is back on the cards this year after moving to an entirely virtual presentation in 2020 due to the health pandemic.
"We are in full swing, we're only 20-something days now until the event... we've had great nominations from the competitors and are on track for another really strong year," Mount Isa Mines Rodeo CEO Natalie Flecker said.
Ms Flecker said while most of the bulls used in the rodeo every year were born and bred in Queensland, a lot of the broncs were sourced from interstate and had been moved already to avoid border closures.
"You can't have great cowboys without great stock," she said.
"We're very confident that we certainly will still have the best of the best."
Ms Flecker said pre-sale ticket sales were very strong.
"Our ticket sales for spectators, we've had ticket sales from all across Australia which is really exciting," she said.
"At the moment, we're just asking them to sit tight, we know with COVID how quickly things move and they do change daily.
"As an organisation we're asking them to bear with us until two weeks out and then at that stage we'll either work with them to give them a credit for the 2022 event, or in some extreme cases we will be offering refunds."
Ms Flecker said the organisers understood the fluidity of the border closures but said at the end of the day, they did have an event to run.
"We've got costs and things like that which we've already expended, and we need to put on an event," she said.
Nominations
Ms Flecker said organisers were considering extending nomination deadlines, with border closures leaving a lot of competitors unsure if they will be able to attend.
"Nominations are certainly on-track to be very similar to our 2019 entries," she said.
"For us, it might be that we might need to extend some of our opening times for our nominations just so we can see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
"We want to work with them, we want them to be here, we want them to have the opportunity to get here because there hasn't been too many rodeos happening over the last 12 months."
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