This year, as part of the Western Stampede in West Jordan, we attended the demolition derby (presented by WGAS). At the start, they brought out the rodeo royalty and the city council and the announcer wanted us to cheer for them.
I would not want to be one of them right now. I would expect that the angry emails/calls/letters/texts/whatever started around 8:30 PM the evening of the event.
There were four "rounds", in which less than twenty cars competed. The first roud was four cars, and was stopped after the first car pulled his flag (which took something like 30 seconds, and involved no significant action. For the second round, only three cars pulled into the arena (the fourth car apparently couldn't get started, and having taken his sweet time to arrive at that conclusion), but one was having trouble getting his engine started. About 10 seconds after the "GO", he pulled his flag and the round was over. Just like that, we're through half of the derby.
We went to intermission. Yes, intermission in a demolition derby. This is apparently what you do when you have so few cars that all of the ones that competed in the first two rounds also need to compete in the third and fourth rounds. I guess. Maybe the officials were just taking a break after all their hard officialing in the first half. Who can be sure?
The third round ("the main event") actually involved cars being demolished, which was a refreshing change from the first two rounds ("heat #1" and "heat #2"). Standard demolision derby stuff, though there was no fire, which is always a bit of a disappointment. The fourth round ("the heavy metal round", whatever that means) also resembled standard demolition derby fare, but there was only 5 or so cars in each of the last two rounds. It was all over by 8:30 after having started late, by maybe 7:15 (or maybe later).
I paid $24 for this, to get me and my wife in (and the 2yr old son, who was not amused when cars were not running). After attending the derby in Spanish Fork over the last few years, to say that we were disappointed is an understatement. I would not be surprised if WGAS were not invited to present next year's derby.