It`s scary but it`s fun. Bull-riding takes such intense concentration. So much pressure just builds up, builds up, builds up, you just try to bring your heart rate down, slow it down. Then you are in the chute and the bull`s slamming around and snorting, and you`re real close and they tell you to pull up your ropes, and you`re just seconds away, then the gate flies open and you`re just riding and bucking and holding on and paying attention and gritting your teeth.
You get completely captivated. All you hear are the bull sounds. You hear him bellowing and wheezing and you hear him hitting the ground. It`s just deafening-the silence outside that. Then toward the end of the ride, maybe you can hear the crowd noise; it comes in at the back of your mind and rises. Then the gun goes off-boom-and all the pressure`s off. You jump off; you are clean; he didn`t touch you. Oh, it`s great.
When I`m riding, I concentrate on where the bull is moving every moment. It is such a controlled tension, because you have to watch his every move. But you have to be relaxed, because if you are not relaxed, he`ll buck you off. If you are too tight, you`ll fall off, just as any athlete will fail if he`s too nervous. Yet it`s such a controlled thing. You just grit your teeth and pull and hold down the ropes and try to ride.
The average bull weighs about 1,600 pounds, once in a while 1,800 or bigger; 1,600 is average. There`s a lot more beef than rider. But you don`t have to be strong to ride a bull. It helps. But it`s really a balance thing. It`s an aggressive game. You have to know when to jump off. You jump off him while he`s bucking. You try to beat the bull to the ground, so you don`t get that whip or that snap.
Some of the bulls are real nice, you can pet and feed them in their pens. Most of the bulls I ride are handled by people all the time. They get tired of trying to eat you every time they see you. But some of them do have that meanness in them.
The bull that got me last year was like that. He knew exactly who I was. He got me down after I jumped off him and thank God he didn`t have any horns, because he just kept smashing his face into me. He had little, nubby horns. He could have done some serious damage. He pawed me and cracked a couple ribs, that`s all.
I first got on a bull in 1976. I`d been an athlete all my life and made the 1976 Olympic trials in track, then injured myself. That ended my track career abruptly, and I didn`t know what in the world I was going to do.
I worked summers at a dude ranch. There I met this old-time cowboy. He had ridden the world`s largest bucking horse in the 1940s. He used to tell me about the cowgirls and how good they used to be, how they would go out and ride these bucking broncs.
I wasn`t a very good rider then. I was just a pleasure rider. But the competitiveness and pride in me made me want to have this man`s respect and admiration. I guess I wanted to be the apple of his eye.
One morning, while I was eating breakfast with my mother in a restaurant, I saw a poster about women`s rodeo. They were looking for contestants, and I decided to enter. My mother was a little surprised, but she figured I`d outgrow it.
I had never been on a bucking bronco then. I had been on horses for pleasure. I started looking for cowboys to teach me how to do this in two weeks. I thought I could do it in two weeks.
I ended up picking a horse that they warned would kill me. All of a sudden, after the draw, the guys got real silent and wouldn`t talk to me. Immediately, I realized I had drawn this horse.
I rode the horse out to the whistle and bucked off right on the whistle. I didn`t know at that point if I had scored at all. I figured the horse got all the points, and I didn`t get any because I didn`t know what I was doing. I was flopping like a rag doll and had whiplash beyond imagination.
After that I was satisfied and I went back to just working and doing my road races and triathlons and playing softball.
About a month later another rodeo came back through town and the women were looking for more money and needed more riders. They called me up and said, ”You should probably ride bulls; you`d be even better.”
So I tried it. I stayed on the bull for about four seconds, but after that I realized I could do this, and I started going to rodeo school. There were about 100 guys in the rodeo school and me. It was a little difficult to get in the school, because I was female.
I went to school in Colorado in 1977. At the end of the school, we had a rodeo and I got kicked in the face by a bull. Fortunately, the plastic surgeons were having a convention there in Colorado Springs. They were really elated that such a case had come in (laughter). I was just what they were looking for, you know.
I rode the bull but he fell down and when he was getting up he kicked me right between the eyes. I stood up and tried to run out of the arena on reflex, and everyone came over and held me down. That was when I realized something was wrong. My face was warm, and I couldn`t see out of my left eye. I thought I`d lost my eye.
I heard my boyfriend pushing through the crowd and I heard him say,
”Geez, her nose is torn off.” That was all I needed. I never saw my face, and it was probably a good thing. The sutures were bad enough. But they did a good job; there`s no scar.
After that, I took about two years off. But I missed athletics, and the rodeo afforded me a chance to compete and travel and see and do. So it ended up being my personal Olympics.
I left a very good, well-paying job to go back into it. I was working for the zoning department at the city of Billings. When I left that to pursue bull-riding, a lot of my friends and family were disappointed.
It was difficult for my family then, because when I got out of it the first time they were saying, ”Oh, thank God she got this out of her system.” They gave me very silent support. That made it hard because my mom was a very vocal supporter when I was in track. It was hard for me not to have my mom there. Not necessarily just telling me I could do it, but just looking up and seeing her there.
But she was just so scared, and still is so scared. My father kind of enjoyed watching it, the attention I got, the novelty of it. My dad would come and say, ”You know my daughter rides bulls, but hey, I didn`t talk her into it; she did it on her own.”
Right before I won the world title, I went through a bad time financially. I didn`t want people to know I was in that much trouble, because here I was educated, had been working, I knew I could get a job, and I was going through this devastating time.
I lived a completely austere lifestyle. The heat was off; I had burned everything and didn`t have money for gas. It was cold out and I had no food.
I went from making $30,000 a year to going for this goal and sacrificing everything. I`d had a lifestyle that included a lot of equipment, mountain bikes, kayaks, horses, dogs. I was doing triathlons. I gave it all up.
I came back from traveling one day, and there were six cords of wood in the yard and the freezer was full of venison and grouse. And there was a pile of hay for my horses. People knew I wasn`t going to take (handouts), so they said, ”Well, we are just going to give it to you.”
Finally, I was going to the finals. At this point, I was in the lead, I was doing well, and I just had to get there and show up. Well, I went and the first day of competition I got bucked off and stepped on.
I was told I was done. I suffered an injury in my left leg. My leg was so swollen, the nerves were compressed. In essence, my lower leg stopped working. I was pretty scared.
I was in and out of consciousness all evening. I called my orthopedist back home, and my physical therapist, and told them what I was going through. They told me I was going to lose my leg and all this other stuff. I thought they were probably right, that I shouldn`t do the ride, but I had to go on.
My friends rolled me up to the bull on crutches. They set me down on him, with my leg wrapped. I rode him out and won the title in `86. I pretty much went straight to the hospital after that.
For a while (friends) thought I had to be on steroids or something. There were a lot of `whys.` What would possess somebody who didn`t grow up that way, on a ranch, to do that? They thought it was just a course of events I had to satisfy. But to me it`s a real sport and I have trained very, very hard for it. I run 8 to 10 miles a day and spend three hours (also daily) in the gym.
Women really faced a lot of turmoil when we first started. The bulls were really good, for one thing. The attrition rate escalated for a while. And word travels fast: ”This girl got hung up on a bull, and, man, she got her head beat in.” It always sounds worse when you talk about it happening to a female. It`s not worse, but they make it sound that way.
When I`m getting ready to ride I just reinstill the confidence I had after the last ride. I tell myself I`ve done it before and I know I can do it again. That injury is just a one-time thing. And the chances of having one again are next to none. I just put it out of my mind.
Then I mentally run through the fundamentals of riding.
Then I spend the last half hour, 45 minutes just clearing my mind of absolutely everything. Because if you`re in there thinking about anything but the bull, your reactions are delayed. And if your reactions are delayed, you are bucked off and on the ground.
My source of strength has been spiritual. Until the last two or three years, I thought I could do this by myself. I was doing it by myself. My friends thought I was crazy. And partly in doing that I shut a lot of doors and didn`t let people in. Then I did start letting people in. And I very much wanted to say after I rode or after I won, ”We won this.”
God is definitely a part of it, but I think more important than doing the praise-the-Lord hoopla is looking to my friends for that spiritual support and guidance. I see deeper into them and a little farther into their hearts and a little more into their understanding of me all the time. Before, I was very selfish, very goal-oriented, very single-minded. This was my dream. I was going to do it alone. No one was going to mess it up.
After my fiance died in a plane crash in 1987, I took a lot of knocks. A few people got in and told me how much they really loved me and that they did care. It was very hard for them to be supportive. They were fearful for me, saying, ”You are going to kill yourself.” I was constantly defending myself with my friends, saying, ”I am not crazy; I know what I`m doing.” Finally, they came around.
The cowboys are impressed. They can tell I`m not in there just to mess around. I`m in there working out. After a good ride, they come up and say,
”You rode him as well as any of us could, or better.”
To have one of the champions say, ”Hey, I couldn`t have done better” is a big compliment to me. That`s all I need from those guys. There are many reasons I still ride. Getting that kind of respect is nice.
