Pro bull riders scratch out a living, hoping for a break. The miles, bruises and expenses pile up. But at the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas, even a last chance can pay off.
From the easy chair in his living room, Richard “Tuff” Hedeman tinkers with his VCR, searching for the moment.
He slows the tape to the point where he has just exited the chute on the back of a Brahman-Charolais mix named Bodacious in the 1995 Professional Bull Riders World Finals in Las Vegas.
The animal thrusts its back legs impossibly high into the air, yanking Hedeman down hard and then, powering upward, shattering his face against its own boulder-size head. The first blow makes the cowboy’s body go limp.
The second sends him hurtling to the dirt.
Hedeman, now 40 and a retired champion, watches the young man on the screen somehow pick himself up and stagger out of the arena. He sees a face bloodied beyond recognition. He chuckles and offers a one-word commentary.
“Ugly.”
But now, viewing the tape in the stone house he built on his 75 acres just off a two-lane highway in Morgan Mill, Texas, he also recognizes a beautiful irony.
Flashed live before a national TV audience, the horrific wreck sent the fledgling PBR crashing into the public consciousness. It provided a defining moment in the way only breathtaking violence can.
“I’ll see people you wouldn’t expect to have a clue what bull riding is,” Hedeman says, “and they’ll tell me they seen me ride Bodacious. But that’s human nature – they like to see a little blood and guts. They don’t want to see anybody killed or maimed, but if it happens, they don’t want to miss it.”
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Both the decade-old PBR and the rival Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, with its new Xtreme Bulls tour carried on cable television, have staked their futures on eight seconds of life-or-death tension. Each of those moments attracts TV audiences, followed by advertisers and sponsors.
For Hedeman, a founding investor in PBR, the “wreck” on Bodacious made a mark far beyond his financial portfolio. It took two surgeries to reconstruct his face into something he says never quite duplicated the original. He lost 25 pounds.
The crash also jarred his senses. Chocolate never tasted the same. Neither did hamburger.
His then-3-year-old son, Lane, named in memory of bull rider Lane Frost, who died in 1989 after being gored in the back at Cheyenne Frontier Days, saw what this bull had done to his father’s face and minced no words: “Dad, if you get Bodacious again, you got to chicken out.”
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Post / Cyrus McCrimmon |
| The owner of world famous bull Bodacious, Sammy Andrews, shows off a Bodacious memento from the famous bull. |
Hedeman reluctantly agreed. To try again would be “beyond the line of stupidity,” he admitted, and so he hoped he and Bodacious never crossed paths again.
Naturally, they did.
But this time, Hedeman “turned him out” – the bull-riding equivalent of a forfeit. Although the decision ran counter to every cowboy instinct and nearly made him physically ill, it was basically a no-brainer. He had nothing to prove. Riding Bodacious in his weakened post-surgical condition easily could have been suicidal.
Bodacious’ owner, stock contractor Sammy Andrews, realized that if one of the toughest riders in history turned out his best bull, others would surely follow suit.
So he retired Bodacious from competition – but not from the public eye. If anything, the bull’s stock rose in his retirement. Under the guidance of rodeo announcer Bob Tallman, who became the animal’s business manager, Bodacious’ seed was sold far and wide, as were T-shirts and videos. His likeness appeared with Hedeman’s on Bud Light advertisements, and he made countless public appearances to open car dealerships and Western-wear stores.
A perfume bore his name. In an unauthorized venture the bull’s handlers unsuccessfully tried to squelch, so did a line of condoms.
“People ask me, ‘How many guys did he kill?”‘ says owner Andrews, whose favorite bull died three years ago and was buried on his ranch near the Texas-Oklahoma border. “I tell them none, and they’re disappointed.”
NASCAR shows the way
Randy Bernard accepted the job as CEO of the Professional Bull Riders just weeks before Bodacious cold-cocked Hedeman on live TV. That broadcast – which came right on the heels of a NASCAR race on the TNN cable network – drew a 2.4 rating, which means the spectacle of the wreck beamed into more than 2 million homes.
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A business model was born.
The PBR had come bucking into the world just three years earlier,
when 20 cowboys each kicked in $1,000 to create an organization
they hoped would bring some sense of order to a sport recently spun
off from traditional rodeo competition.
Bernard made it rock ‘n’ roll.
Then only 28, Bernard led the charge toward an audience demographic
that veers away from Western roots and buys into bull riding under
a hipper, more happening description: the original extreme sport.
Elaborate introductions, lasers, pyrotechnics and an emphasis on
the dangers faced by its toughened competitors – all this was
melded with appealing strains of Americana and patriotic fervor.
In a marketing sense, the PBR has followed squarely in NASCAR’s
footsteps. It aims for a remarkably similar demographic, tries to
piggyback its broadcasts on the televised auto races and
understands the axiom that many fans – of either sport – show up in
the hope of witnessing a spectacular crash.
According to the PBR’s market research, 70 percent of its fans also
love NASCAR. Only 12 percent identify with traditional rodeo.
Market research and focus groups also have guided the PBR’s
concoction of original music to wrap around its live shows – a
country-rock mix that leans toward the latter – and influenced its
decision to more aggressively market its bulls as athletes.
That idea, which pays homage to the post-retirement success of
Bodacious, has produced a line of plush, stuffed bulls straight
from the tour, as well as a series of miniature “CollectiBulls.”
Women, Bernard says, listed the beasts above the cowboys among
their favorite things about bull riding. And PBR research shows its
market is 37 percent female.
“We never want to get away from our roots – chaps and cowboys
hats,” says Bernard, 36. “But we can capitalize both in the city
and the country and make fans by implementing rock ‘n’ roll,
pyrotechnics, lasers and make it a great show. We can make these
guys heroes.”
Like NASCAR in its early days, the PBR has nurtured a television
following through cable – currently, the Outdoor Life Network – and
gradually bulled its way onto network TV with NBC, which broadcast
seven events this year.
As television interest has grown, so has the prize money – about
$10 million this season. Cowboys from as far away as Brazil and
Australia now pursue the rising financial incentive, chasing down a
living and feeding their hunger for bulls.
Cashing in on both circuits
On a Friday afternoon in September, Jason Legler points his white
Chevy Lumina along the highway from Omaha southeast to Kansas City,
then south to Joplin and east again to Springfield, Mo.
These 400 miles – among the more than 60,000 that have spun his
odometer this year – roll by to the tunes of classic country, rock
‘n’ roll and, when fatigue sets in, a quick station change to a
comedy channel on the satellite radio his wife gave him for his
birthday.
But the crucial calculation here isn’t mileage; it’s dollars. After
walking away from a PRCA event in Omaha with nothing to show for
it, Legler sees the PBR stop in Springfield as an opportunity too
good to pass up.
Even more important than the prize money, it could move Legler
closer to qualifying for the PBR World Finals – the Las Vegas
season finale where a rider could reap a financial bonanza of more
than a quarter-million dollars.
For Legler, Springfield is a quick stop. After riding there, he’ll
hop back in his car and drive late into the night to Tulsa, where
he’ll catch a 5:30 a.m. flight to California for another PRCA
rodeo. Like many of the cowboys, he works both tours, dips into
both pots to tough out a living.
“You got to rodeo a little harder,” says the 25-year-old Eaton,
Colo., resident. “But it’s worth it in the end.”
In a sport in which everyone seems to be coming off some sort of
injury, Legler has been coming to grips with a fractured eye socket
suffered in a head-butt with a bull last March.
He’d broken bones before, but this was different. The pain made him
sick to his stomach, and when he blew his nose, the skin around his
eye puffed up like some fleshy balloon, hinting at damage to his
nasal cavity.
His doctor determined Legler didn’t need surgery, but advised
against riding for a while. That’s when Legler picked up his first
helmet – a modified hockey helmet custom-fit with a titanium cage.
Against his doctor’s recommendation, Legler rode three times in
three cities over the next 72 hours. He’d never worn a helmet much
before, but right off the bat he took second place at an event in
Austin, Texas, and just stayed with it.
Although the physical effects of his injury have passed, Legler
faces mental obstacles as well. It’s the ability to focus totally
on the bull – to block out fear and self-doubt and just perform –
that often means the difference between recovery and the easy
slip-slide to anonymity.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that bull riding has drawn many
riders closer to God, or at the very least caused them to consider
mortality at a point in their lives when they are most full of
themselves.
“I probably wasn’t near as spiritual before bull riding,” Legler
says, “but then I didn’t have near the danger. Guys on the road
bring the Lord’s word to you. It’s like a guardian angel. Everyone
hopes to have one. It’s too rough of a sport not to have one.”
A group prayer usually unfolds somewhere behind the chutes. In
hotel rooms on the road, Bible studies spur discussion that spills
into the early-morning hours. And in an extension of the
time-honored tradition of “cowboy church,” some pro riders and
fans gather in arenas for informal worship.
Behind the chutes in Springfield, a young cowboy named Nick
Morrison gathers contestants who’d like to pray – and almost
everyone at least removes his hat and keeps a respectful silence –
and quickly gets to the heart of the matter.
“If you were to die tonight and don’t know where you’d go,” the
fresh-faced, 21-year-old Morrison says on bended knee, launching
into more of a sermon than a prayer, “well, don’t leave here
without knowing. I don’t want to get to heaven and see none of you
guys there. That would break my heart.”
A small bull bodes trouble
“Here are 45 of the bravest men in sports today …”
When the house lights go down at the Hammons Center on the campus
of Southwest Missouri State University, the coupling of traditional
Western Americana and 21st-century hype begins.
A fog machine adds to the introduction of the top cowboys, while
rock music blares in the background. Then comes the Pledge of
Allegiance and the national anthem. Four projection screens
suspended above the arena replay every bull ride, while announcers
deliver a running commentary.
Jason Legler wears a black shirt embroidered with the logo for
Saddle Barn, a Roswell, N.M., retailer that furnishes his equipment
and pays some modest performance bonuses.
The cost of the equipment isn’t chump change: Chaps run $300 to
$500, the protective vest $200, a good rope another $200.
Legler has drawn Locust Creek Flash, a relatively small bull but
one that bodes trouble. At 5-foot-10, Legler stands taller than
most riders, and smaller bulls – with less girth on which to
balance – can prove more difficult to keep beneath him.
Sure enough, just a few seconds out of the chute, the bull turns
back, sends Legler flying and then punctuates the ride with a
head-butt to the rider’s chest. Legler’s not hurt, but, with dirt
caked on his shirt, he walks off with nothing to show for the long
miles and long hours that brought him here.
The show over, he signs an autograph for a young boy in a white
straw hat and ambles toward the exit. On the arena concourse, he
drops his dusty equipment bag outside the public men’s room,
removes a plastic bag containing some clean clothes and goes inside
to change. He emerges a few minutes later, slings his bag over one
shoulder and heads for the parking lot.
“Me, I just move on,” Legler says. “What happens, happens. No
point thinking about it. A lot of guys look back at the year and
regret how much time they spent, and how many miles they drove.
“I think you should never look back.”
No place for prima donnas
There’s little in the way of a financial safety net for the
cowboys. No guaranteed contracts, no appearance money, no pay if
you don’t play.
That makes it tough to grind out a living, but it also enhances the
riders’ appeal among sports fans jaded by prima donna millionaires.
Like bull riding’s inherent danger, the rodeo work ethic fits well
into modern marketing efforts to mint a new breed of hero.
But even heroes get hurt.
The PBR reached a sponsorship agreement with HealthSouth, which
offers riders some help with rehabilitation and other medical care
at the company’s facilities. But that’s not always a realistic
option for far-flung cowboys.
And the $500 deductible and $20,000 cap on accident insurance
provided by the PBR – set to increase to a cap of $50,000 next year
– barely begins to cover medical expenses for a serious injury.
Bernard, the PBR’s chief executive, says the organization may
eventually self-insure once it’s financially secure enough to
absorb a $2 million to $3 million hit in a given year. But for now,
riders find it next to impossible to get their own health
insurance.
Some find a friend willing to hire them for a more traditional
off-season job, like framing houses, so they can claim that as
their occupation on an insurance application. Filling in “bull
rider” or “rodeo performer” brings nothing but rejection.
Other riders on both the PRCA and PBR tours place their faith in
the stopgap relief funds sponsored by Justin boots and Resistol
hats, created to help injured competitors pay expenses while they
recover.
Some cowboys, recognizing the high risk and short career span, have
hired agents to maximize their earning potential.
Mark Nestlen of Yukon, Okla.-based Cowboy Sports Agents Inc., has
about two dozen rodeo performers in his stable.
“It’s such a short career, such a small window of opportunity to
make a living and establish something for their families, they’ve
got to get the most out of it,” Nestlen says. “They weren’t
necessarily getting that before.”
In the five years that he’s been representing cowboys, mostly bull
riders, Nestlen has seen endorsement deals mushroom. One top
client, he says, made close to $60,000 in ancillary income five
years ago. Today, he makes closer to $400,000.
It’s all about television. Nestlen says network ratings drive the
dollars his riders can command in sponsorship deals. Top 10 riders
can hit $100,000 or more. Those ranked between 10 and 20 in the PBR
can pull in up to half that from makers of boots, booze, jeans,
riding apparel and from assorted other companies.
Prize money alone has increased dramatically in the past decade.
The 29 top-flight PBR events each offer total purses of about
$120,000, with $24,000 up for grabs in the “Challenger” satellite
tour stops. The winner of the World Finals weekend can make more
than $250,000, and the top rider in a season-long points system
earns a $1 million bonus.
Although the PBR offers more enticing money, PRCA rodeos offer many
bull riders more opportunities to turn their passion into a viable
career. Rodeos coast to coast pay the persistent cowboy enough to
feed both the adrenaline craving and the family. The historic and
prestigious National Finals Rodeo is underway this week in Las
Vegas.
But there’s another twist to the bottom line: With more dollars at
stake, riders become willing to take even greater risks.
“You’ve got cowboys out there who are going to ride, and they
don’t care … how many doctors tell them you can’t,” Nestlen says.
“You shake your head sometimes.”
Safety helmet as mind game
In the middle of Ohio, Jason Legler rolls the dice.
The road to the PBR World Finals passes through Columbus, the last
stop on the top-flight tour. And for Legler, a rider on the bubble,
it’s a last-ditch effort to make the big show, to put together
enough quality rides to finish among the top 45 competitors.
So he has scrapped the helmet.
He considers this a “back to basics” move, a decision grounded
more in superstition than safety, a what-the-heck attempt to
reverse his recent hard luck. He quit riding with the headgear
right after getting dumped by his bull in Springfield, then took
first place at a PRCA rodeo in Kissimmee, Fla.
It’s a dangerous head game, a change of strategy that exposes him
to greater risk, but so far it has worked out. Still, it was a
tough sell to his wife, Kari, who responded not with pleading or
argument, but only a terse reminder: “You know what I think.”
“I guess she don’t want me getting any uglier,” Legler says.
“Sometimes, you got to do things to get your mind back on track.
Next time, I might change the color of my chaps. You never know. I
might have (the helmet) back on tomorrow. Stupid mind games guys
play.”
Behind the chutes at Columbus’ Nationwide Arena, Tandy Freeman –
the orthopedic surgeon whose word is gospel to rodeo athletes –
presides over a small training room. Freeman wears bluejeans and a
cowboy hat and an easy, unflappable Texas demeanor that has
contributed to his reputation.
He and his assistants, trainers Rich Blyn and Peter Wang, have
unpacked three trunks full of supplies that follow them throughout
the tour. Crutches, gauze, bandages, moleskin, back supports and a
small pharmacy spill into the room, where cowboys have come to take
pre-competition treatment. Some pedal a stationary bike in their
boots, strip off shirts and drop jeans to have arms, ribs and legs
taped and wrapped for their rides.
It’s a uniquely challenging area of sports medicine, a service that
took years to gain the trust of cowboys weary of hearing doctors
respond to their injuries with a simple admonition: Stop riding. It
began two decades ago, when a group of sports medicine experts
began tending to cowboys at PRCA rodeos across the country and
compiling a database of the injuries they encountered.
Freeman and the rest of his team take a nonjudgmental approach that
respects the cowboy mentality, the inherent risks of the sport and
the reality that riders often choose to withstand the pain of
injuries that would sideline athletes in sports that demand more
mobility.
“Some trainers ask, ‘Why is that guy competing with a torn ACL?”‘
says Blyn. “Well, because you can. You have to endure the pain for
eight seconds, but it’s something you can get away with. They know
they’re going to be in pain, so they don’t say anything until an
injury bugs them enough. They know when they’re hurt and when
they’re not.”
Television monitors in the training room flash the broadcast feed
of the event on cable’s Outdoor Life Network. One promotional
feature urges viewers to “vote for your favorite rides and
wrecks,” and proceeds to show clips of remarkable ability – and
savage accidents.
One of the crashes, barely a week old, shows rider Justin McBride
getting stomped by his bull – an injury that punctured his lung,
sent him to the hospital and has kept him out of the Columbus
competition.
“Shoot, he’s just out of the hospital and they’re putting him on
the vote,” Freeman says, shaking his head.
On this first night of competition in Columbus, the training room
does a steady business tending to aches, bruises and rung bells.
All in all, it’s a typical evening of hard luck and hard knocks.
Legler gets bucked off his bull at 7.9 seconds – a hair from a
“marked ride,” but scored a fat zero nonetheless – and his hopes
of riding in Las Vegas dim. The headline news, though, is that tour
leader Chris Shivers scores an 89 that extends his lead over the
injured McBride in the race for the million-dollar points title.
Shivers ends the evening tending to an injury of his own. He lies
on a training table, bags of ice stuffed inside his purple shorts
to soothe a chronically aching right hip.
“You want a bag of ice for the hotel?” Freeman offers.
“Yessir.”
‘He can’t feel anything’
Tony Mendes, a curly-haired, bespectacled and contagiously
enthusiastic rider from Utah, stands at the end of a training table
and changes the diaper of his 1-year-old son, Klay.
“What’s a horse say?” Mendes prompts, and Klay delivers a
passable whinny on cue.
Nearby, another cowboy holds his nose.
“Whew! That’s ranker than the bulls,” he says, watching Mendes
complete the change.
There is laughter on this Saturday, the second night of the
Columbus competition, and the training room has been uncommonly
quiet.
But the mood changes quickly.
In the arena, rider Ednei Caminhas lands face-first in the dirt,
and his bull compounds the rough landing by stomping on his back.
The crowd falls silent as the trainers load Caminhas onto a
stretcher, carry him to the training room and lay him on the table
where, moments earlier, a toddler had been getting his diaper
changed.
Caminhas winces from the pain while Blyn and another rider remove
his boots and help peel off his bluejeans, revealing heavily taped
and bandaged legs. His protective vest deflected the blow, but the
bull was among the heaviest of the night and still caught Caminhas
flush enough to do some damage.
Caminhas lies on his stomach, ice on his back, grimacing at the TV
monitor, where the competition rolls on. And where, for the second
night in a row, Legler has been bucked off his bull, all but ending
his hope of riding in the World Finals.
The next contestant, a 29-year-old Arizona cowboy named Beau
Lindley, also gets bucked off, and lands awkwardly on his head. The
fallen rider doesn’t stir.
Suddenly, Blyn bursts into the training room.
“Can I move you?” he says to Caminhas, and the urgency in his
voice prompts the injured rider to slide to a table farther from
the door.
A stretcher bearing Lindley enters. Freeman clears the room, closes
the door. A few minutes later, it swings open again and paramedics
hustle Lindley toward the loading dock.
“He can’t feel anything from here down,” Freeman says solemnly,
holding his hand to his chest.
The competition goes on, but the air has gone out of the arena as
word of the early symptoms circulates among the riders. They greet
the news with grim expressions or weak assurances that he’ll come
out of it, he’ll be OK.
Meanwhile, an ambulance rushes Lindley toward an uncertain future.
The vigil: Praying and waiting
Past midnight, cowboys are strewn along the seventh-floor hallway
of Columbus’ Grant Hospital, backs to the wall, blue-jeaned legs
angling across the floor, hats in their laps. Waiting for news.
Cody Custer, the former champion winding down a legendary career,
has plugged his cellphone into a wall outlet to handle the stream
of calls. At 38, he knows too well the danger and heartbreak of his
sport.
Back in 1998, Custer had been next to ride when young sensation
Jerome Davis fell off and broke his neck in Fort Worth. He hadn’t
immediately realized the extent of Davis’ injury, which left him
paralyzed below the chest.
Custer also had been there three years ago, when Glen Keeley got
stomped by his bull in Albuquerque and suffered severe internal
injuries. He talked to Keeley soon after but didn’t know at the
time how badly that would turn out, either.
“I prayed with him; we were shooting the breeze,” Custer recalls.
“And then I didn’t see him again.”
Keeley later died from his injuries.
But this latest crash cuts particularly deep. Custer taught Lindley
at his Arizona bull-riding school years ago and knows the family
well. He ranks Lindley as his most talented student, a teenager
who, by the third day of lessons, was getting on the rankest bulls
he had.
Lindley, he explains, also understood the price of his passion more
keenly than most. His younger brother died in a bull-riding
accident as a teen.
Custer made the first call to Lindley’s wife, Jaime, to give her
the news before it swung around on the cowboy grapevine. Now, he
urges all the others who ring his cellphone to keep the faith.
“I think he’ll be good,” he tells the latest caller. “We just
got to keep praying for him.”
Across the hall, Todd Pierce, the former bareback rider who has
turned his attention full-time to Christian ministry, also speaks
softly to a bull rider who has called his cellphone.
“He’s doing a lot better. … The spinal cord’s intact …”
Lindley has been wheeled to another part of the hospital for tests,
but finally, a nurse approaches the cowboys and plants the seeds of
hope.
“He’s got some feeling in his feet,” she reports.
“Praise God,” says Pierce.
Just minutes after Lindley went down in the arena and the cowboys
learned the frightful early diagnosis, an envelope circulated. Now,
it has $1,500 inside for whatever Lindley’s family needs – a
typical, heartfelt show of fraternal generosity.
Suddenly, a gurney wheels around the corner en route to the ICU.
It’s Lindley, lying with his neck in a brace. When the cowboys leap
to their feet and follow, the attendants stop so Custer and Pierce
can say a quick hello to their friend.
They tell him that Jaime is flying out in the morning, and not to
worry about money. The PBR will pick up her travel and hotel costs,
leaving the $1,500 in the envelope for miscellaneous expenses.
Even at a dark hour, Pierce injects some cowboy levity.
“You land on your head,” he jokes, “and you still get a
check.”
By 3 a.m., the nurses have settled Lindley into a bed next to the
window in an ICU room. They lead Custer and Pierce back to see him.
The cowboys stand on either side of the bed, close to his head so
Lindley – still in the neck brace that limits his field of vision –
can see them.
They talk about … bull riding. Lindley has choice words for the
animal that flung him awkwardly to the dirt. He asks who won and
what bull he rode.
Moments later, a doctor comes by on his rounds. He begins with
Lindley’s feet and tests him for sensation, gradually moving up his
leg and then to his arm and hand. Lindley answers “yes” to every
touch. He has some limited movement in his arms and hands.
But he does not move his legs.
“So he could just walk out of here with a neck brace in a couple
days?” Pierce asks hopefully.
“Possible,” says the doctor, who tempers any optimism with a
disclaimer. The extent of Lindley’s further recovery remains
unknown. He adds, in a resigned tone that suggests he knows
something about cowboys, that perhaps Lindley should quit riding
bulls.
“We’ll see,” Lindley says.
Custer pulls out his cellphone and dials Jaime. He holds the phone
to Lindley’s ear, so that back in Arizona his wife can hear his
voice.
“Don’t be upset,” Lindley says, the words sticking on dry lips.
“I’m OK … don’t worry … I’ll be OK.”
Before they leave, Custer and Pierce lay their hands on Lindley and
pray.
‘I won’t give up ’til it’s over’
Two weeks later, Jason Legler stands in line at a designer coffee
shop at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, wondering what in the
world “mocha” is and inquiring about the definition of
“latt.”
“Do you have regular coffee?” he asks.
After getting bucked off both his bulls in Columbus, Legler knew
his chance of qualifying for the PBR finale had been stomped into
the arena dust. Only the top 45 riders make the cut. But the
inevitability of injuries – such as the one that struck Lindley,
who easily would have qualified for the finals – means that a
handful of alternates must be available.
Seven are invited based on season rankings. Legler is seventh on
the list.
A long shot.
He cashed in some of his frequent-flier miles and booked a flight
to Vegas and a hotel room at the less-ritzy Gold Coast farther down
the Strip – where, he says, “they let me whoop and holler while
I’m playing blackjack.”
For four days, he will relax and play the tables, have cocktails
and watch the bull riding. He sat in the stands to watch Thursday’s
opening round, but the rest he plans to view on the hotel’s
big-screen television.
“I probably won’t be in it at all – a spectator for once,” he
says. “Last night, I got a ticket and didn’t know where to go.”
After a tough season, he could use the rest: just a few blessed
weeks to try to heal a nagging lower-back injury that has had him
popping ibuprofen regularly – three in the morning, like vitamins,
and three more after competition.
Still …
“I knew (a ride in the Finals) was pretty much impossible,” he
says, “but I won’t give up ’til it’s over.
On Sunday morning, at the last possible moment, Legler’s phone
rings.
He has been sitting in a restaurant at the Gold Coast, sipping
coffee after ordering bacon and eggs for breakfast. The news stuns
him: Veteran Jim Sharp can’t ride because of a bruised rotator cuff
from the previous night.
Legler doesn’t wait for breakfast to arrive. He tosses a $20 bill
on the table and hustles to his room, grabs his bag of gear and
heads for the door. On the way out, he runs into a couple of
buddies who drive him to the arena.
He punches his wife’s number into his cellphone, tells Kari the
news, and asks her to call his parents and let them know he’s
riding on national television.
In the darkened Thomas and Mack Center, Legler bounds down a long
ramp beneath the glare of a spotlight and raises his hat to the
cheers that greet his name. Pyrotechnics flash across the arena.
The faint smell of sulfur mingles with the musty aroma of the
bulls.
About 90 minutes into the show, Legler straddles Black Jack, who
stumbles right out of the gate and gives an awkward performance,
though Legler rides him capably.
The drama comes after the eight-second buzzer, when Legler tumbles
off the bull and careens head-first into the metal chutes.
The impact stuns him, but it’s the next couple of seconds that send
a gasp through the crowd. Black Jack dodges the bull fighters’
distractions and charges the downed cowboy.
The bull’s head and horns crash into the chute with a heavy, dull
thud, just inches from Legler’s unprotected head. The dazed rider
remains blissfully unaware. The bull fighters help him to safety.
His score is relatively low, 81.5 points, owing not to Legler’s
effort but the bull’s poor performance. The judges grant him the
option of a re-ride.
At first, he’s too woozy to respond. Blood fills his nostrils,
though he feels no pain in his nose. Slowly, the world swims back
into focus.
Re-ride? You bet.
This time Legler draws a bull named Red Alert. It bucks and spins
but can’t loosen the cowboy’s grip. It’s a fine ride, scored a very
respectable 88.5, and Legler pulls off his hat and sends it
spinning, saucerlike, into the air.
In a difficult season fraught with injuries, he salvages more than
a measure of pride. Although Legler figures his finish – eighth
best among the day’s rides – will leave him out of the money, he’s
dead wrong.
When the competition’s final tally comes out, Legler has a number
beside his name: $2,250.
It’s a minor windfall, certainly more than he expected. He does not
even learn of the prize money until later, well after Chris Shivers
has been handed an oversized check for $1 million and the weekend
champion, rookie Jody Newberry, accepts a check for more than
$250,000.
That kind of money is the pot of gold at the end of a cowboy’s
rainbow. But for Legler, the long season ends with about $80,000 in
total winnings between the PBR and PRCA. The cowboy life cost him
roughly half that in travel expenses.
Bull riding’s revolving door of injuries, including the wreck that
eliminated Beau Lindley from competition, contributed to Legler’s
chance for a turn in the national spotlight. It’s a fact of life
riders understand and accept.
For Lindley, now recuperating in a Phoenix rehabilitation center,
surgery has improved the sensation in his legs and feet. That has
fueled optimism about his recovery, though the prognosis remains
uncertain.
Risk has never kept cowboys out of the dusty, flood-lit arenas in
the Texas hinterlands, the honky tonks of rural America, the
small-stakes jackpots where roughstock meets rough-hewn courage.
And it won’t keep them from seeking their sport’s grandest stages.
“When you get that one shot,” Legler says, clutching a long-neck
bottle of celebratory beer, “you don’t want to fall off.”
He retreats to the Gold Coast, antes up at the blackjack table and
plays the cards he’s dealt. Ace and jack. A winner.
“Whoa, Nellie!” he shouts.
TO HELP / Assistance funds
The Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund, 101 Pro Rodeo Drive, Colorado Springs,
CO 80919, can be reached at 888-662-5223. More information on the fund,
associated with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, is at
www.prorodeo.org/jccf.
The Resistol Relief Fund can be reached at Resistol Relief Resources
Inc., 6 S. Tejon St., Suite 700, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, or call
719-471-3008, ext. 3128. More information about the fund, associated
with the Professional Bull Riders, is at www.pbrnow.com/RRF.
