LASALLE — Old soldiers may fade away, but old bull riders hobble off into the distance.
“Usually your early to mid-30s is kind of the end of the road,” said Kody Lostroh, Colorado’s first Professional Bull Riders champion. “Mostly you just get tired of hurting all the time.”
At 24, Lostroh figures to have many years ahead of him in his PBR career. But unlike riders of the previous generation, many of whom scraped by week to week and rode until their bodies gave out, Lostroh will be financially secure by the time he jumps off his last bull.
“I feel blessed,” he said. “I do it because it’s fun, and I like to do it.”
Lostroh, according to former rider and PBR co-founder Cody Lambert, just completed the most lucrative season in PBR history. He pocketed about $650,000 going into the recent Built Ford Tough Series finals in Las Vegas. Add in his $1 million bonus for winning the championship and his windfall jumped to more than $1.6 million.
That’s a far cry from 1992, when Lambert and Ty Murray, arguably the most famous rider in history, launched the PBR. According to Lambert, the first year the circuit had a finals was 1994, when the first-place rider won about $40,000.
“We were watching our heroes retiring and trying to find a job the next day,” Lambert said. “They worked their whole lives riding and didn’t know another trade. . . . We’re still not where other major-league sports are by any means, but these guys today have opportunities that didn’t exist back then.”
Jim Armstrong, The Denver Post
