El Lazador. El Profesor. El Embajador.
Aldo Garibay, 40, grew up in the Mexican state of Sonora—a few hours south of Arizona’s border—on his family’s ranch, where they raised cattle and crops. As Aldo explains it, team ropings and rodeo abound in northern Mexico, particularly in the neighboring state of Chihuahua, and it wasn’t long before his father was finding opportunities for his sons, Sergio—Aldo’s senior by eight years—and eventually Aldo, to become skilled competitors.
The Garibay brothers would come to dominate the Mexican rodeo world and would each earn a record-breaking number of World Champion titles—10 for Sergio and then another 11 for Aldo.
Among the Spanish-speaking roping community of the Americas, he’s been referred to as “The Trevor Brazile of Mexico,” and published news articles illustrate the willingness of his students to travel from all over Latin America to train in person with the champion. Tens of thousands of fans and ropers follow his social media pages for training tips and videos from Aldo, where his viewers can see he proudly wears patches from sponsors like Classic, Heel-O-Matic and Wrangler.
North of the border, in the United States, Aldo is not yet as well known among the English-speaking roping community, and it’s high time that changed.
THE ROPER / EL LAZADOR
As a cattleman, Aldo’s father would travel to the border to trade, where he made a connection that would set the trajectories for his sons’ roping ambitions.
“My dad used to send cattle to the border, export cattle,” Aldo explained with his impressive handle on the English language. “The guy who bought the cattle from him in Nogales, Arizona, told my dad, he said, ‘If you want your son to learn to is the top 15 in the world , and he just lives in Tucson. I’ll introduce you to him and I bet he can teach your kid the right way.’ That guy was George Aros.”
