In advance of this year’s Sports Emmy Awards, SVG is taking a deep dive into the six production-technologies nominated for this year’s George Wensel Technical Achievement Award.

Rodeo has long been one of the toughest sports to explain on television — eight seconds of roughstock action that's thrilling to watch but difficult to break down for viewers who can't see the nuances of technique in real time. With AIQ: Where Data Meets Dirt, Teton Ridge and The Cowboy Channel set out to solve that problem.

The goal of AIQ is to put meaningful data points on barrel racing and roughstock — saddle bronc, bareback bronc, and bull riding. Developed in partnership with TWG AI, Palantir, and NVIDIA, the proprietary system uses video rather than on-body sensors to map movement, an approach chosen to avoid interfering with either the contestants or the animal athletes in such a violent sport. The model, trained on extensive archive footage beginning at the 2024 Reno Rodeo, renders a skeletal frame tracking the bull's movement alongside color-coded overlays on the rider's legs and torso, plus on-screen data graphics. For barrel racing, a heat tracer charts speed, angles, and racing line around the barrels.

AIQ debuted at the 2025 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, where clips were processed in the cloud — transmitted via Bitfire — and integrated into the network's pre-show analysis using a Telestrator to freeze and break down each run. Turnaround time has since dropped dramatically, from 10 to 14 hours to roughly 45 seconds for roughstock and 90 seconds for barrel racing.

In this conversation, Don Cardona, vice president, live events, production and broadcast operations, Teton Ridge / The Cowboy Channel, walks SVG through AIQ's development, how the technology has reshaped The Cowboy Channel's storytelling, and plans to deploy it next at the American Rodeo at Globe Life Field this weekend.