Cowboy Hero Stops Runaway Chuckwagon

‘I took a chance and
it panned out:’ outrider hero

JOHN DOWN CALGARY
HERALD

Chanse Vigen has rapidly built a resume as one of the best
outriders in chuckwagon racing. Now, a lot of people are looking at the
23-year-old cowboy from Grande Prairie
as a hero for actions he took immediately following Saturday night’s wreck that
sent driver Tyler Helmig to hospital with a broken elbow and pelvis, and killed
three of Gary Gorst’s wagon horses.

 Helmig was ejected from his
wagon when it ran into Gorst’s felled team of thoroughbreds halfway into the
first turn of the seventh race. The last thing anybody needed was a loose wagon
on the track given the gravity of the situation, and Vigen was in position to
do something about it.

The two-time World Pro champion
rode up to the back of the wagon, grabbed the back hoops, swung into the box
and raced to the front. Finding no reins, he hopped onto the pole, stepped up
between the wheel team and started driving them out of harm’s way.

“I’ve never done it before,”
said the third generation chuckwagon man of his daring act. “I’ve seen David
Bensmiller do it at the runoffs in Bashaw and Chad Fyke do it at Ponoka. If I
wouldn’t have seen them do it, I probably wouldn’t have even known how to do
it.”

Vigen, who has done some
driving himself and hopes to one day follow his late grandfather Ralph Vigen
and dad Mike Vigen to the World Pro circuit with a wagon outfit, said he didn’t
think twice, just reacted.

“I didn’t have much option,
really,” he said. “The only other way to do it would have been to go from your
horse to the right wheeler, but all the lines were dragging and if you ride up
there and step on those lines, it’s not going to add up, either. So I took a
chance and it panned out.” But it was a wild ride. “Coming around to that first
turn with so much stuff all over the place and then we almost ran into Kelly
(Sutherland). I got some help steering through there because there wasn’t much
room. Everyone was trying to help with the wreck, outriders were pulling up,
pickup men were out there . . . there wasn’t much room to operate.”

Earlier in the night, in the
third race, he took ahold of one of Darcy Flad’s lead horses to try to help the
driver pull them up after one of his horses had stepped over a tug.

But that’s a routine assignment
for an outrider.

“It’s never a good thing for
anybody when there’s a wagon out there with nobody in it because it means
something bad has happened,” said the two time Calgary
aggregate champion outrider.

“It’s not good for the sport,
not good for anyone.

“(Helmig’s) horses got away
with a few scratches and that was the goal. That’s why you get in there to try
and make sure the horses don’t get hurt.

“That was the purpose and we
achieved that goal.”