They’re young and tough, and that’s no bull.
Professional sports have a no more tenacious or death-defying athlete than the professional bull rider, and hardly a one of them would crack 160 pounds with rocks in their pockets, judging from the 40 riders behind the chutes before Monday night’s competition at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo.
And no more than one or two were older than 30.
“When things are going good, I think I might hang around until I’m 35,” said Colby Yates, 25, of Fort Worth, Texas, wearing a thin blue cast on his right wrist. “When things are going bad, I start thinking I might not make it another year or two.”
Yates is a rising star on the Professional Bull Riders circuit, earning almost $93,000 in 2006.
Last year in Little Rock, Ark., he scored a 91 (out of 100) riding Here Kitty Kitty – the highest score of his two-year pro career. Monday night, Here Kitty Kitty got even, tossing the 135-pound Yates like a rag doll and sending him scurrying to get clear of the one-ton beast.
It’s a young man’s game, for sure, said Jerome Robinson, the PBR show coordinator.
“The career of bull rider is about the same as an NFL running back – five years, 10 if you’re real lucky,” said Robinson, a rider in the PBR Ring of Honor, joining the hall of fame in 1999 with legends Lane Frost and Tuff Hedeman. “The injuries add up pretty fast.”
The local hero in Denver was Kody Lostroh, a 21-year-old who grew up in Longmont and lives in Greeley. He was rookie of the year in 2005, and in just two full seasons, he has earned nearly half a million dollars.
He emerges from a medical trailer near the chutes with an Ace bandage wrapped tightly around his left elbow. Nothing serious, he said, just a hyper-extension. The same arm was soon strapped to a 2,000-pound whirling dervish named Cowpix.
Lostroh has had broken ribs and cracked vertebrae, but he was back on a bull in search of a championship in no time at all. Last year, he finished in the top 5 in the world.
“I guess it just kind of goes with it,” he said of the injuries. “I’d rather get hurt doing something I love than get hit by a bus walking across the street.”
Dustin Elliott of North Platte, Neb., put it another way.
“You don’t have a boss; you don’t have to get up and go to an office every morning,” said the 25-year-old four-year pro with nearly $400,000 in winnings. “And the money’s decent.”
Fans can’t get enough of the fast, violent sport.
“It’s just the intensity of it,” said Kami Clementi, 19, of Pueblo, enjoying the view above the chutes Monday night.
Attendance at PBR events has grown from 10.7 million fans in 2002 to 19.5 million in 2006. Last weekend, sell-out shows in New York City’s Madison Square Garden featured one event – men on bulls.
In 1994, the PBR began luring the best riders in the world away from a full slate of rodeo events, including roping, racing and steer wrestling.
“The reason PBR started was because people were coming to the rodeo primarily to see the bull riders,” said Megan Darnell, spokeswoman for the league. “Riders got tired of paying the bills for everybody else.”
Its fan club, TeamPBR, includes 300,000 dues-paying members worldwide,
Cody Lambert, the PBR’s vice president and another Ring of Honor member, picks every bull for every PBR event from the thousands of fierce animals ranchers offer the league each year.
He judges bulls the same way as riders – not by size or age but by their passion for the sport.
“I don’t care how big he is. I don’t care how mean he is,” Lambert said. “Their performance is the only thing that matters.”
