Galloping Grandmas Still Riding Rodeo

Rocking chairs and retirement are for someone else, say Wanda Cagliari and Wilma Hybarger. Instead of easing into their golden years, these 70-year-old twins from Fallon, Nevada, are riding high, as national correspondent Hattie Kauffman reports for The Early Show's "Young at Heart" series.

"When I sit down in a chair and get up, I can hardly move. As long as I'm moving on a horse, I feel fine, so I'm going to keep on doing it," Hybarger told Kauffman. That's exactly what she and her sister continue to do — whirling around the rodeo at full gallop.

They've been at it for decades and their homes are filled, floor to ceiling, with their awards. The sisters have been tall in the saddle since they were teenagers back in the 1950's. They began as trick riders, doing stunts even the toughest cowboys wouldn't try.

"You stand up in the saddle, do a somersault off, hit the ground, come up and split the neck and then go down for a single vault and back into the saddle," Hybarger said in describing a trick. "It was a lot of fun," chimed in Cagliari, a 10-time champion of the Senior Pro Rodeo Association.

Fun, yes — but dangerous, too, and the sisters have the battle scars to prove it. "My arm has been broken, my leg's been broken, I had my knee replaced," said Hybarger. "Horses have fallen and smashed this shoulder twice and this shoulder twice."

To try something easier, they took up barrel racing, though their competition is often much younger. "They're kind of like the Energizer bunnies — they keep going and going," said Cagliari's daughter, Cathy Cagliari.

When they turned 60, Hybarger and Cagliari began racing in the senior circuit and beat the men, prompting a change in the way the competition is structured. "The next year, they decided, 'Well, we can't have this,' so they made a women's division and a men's division," laughs Cagliari.

The sisters tell Kauffman that other than a few broken bones they could have lived without, there is nothing they would change about their rough-and-tumble careers. In fact, it's full speed ahead for these tough old-timers: Their next senior pro rodeo competition is coming up in May.