Some pictures of Diana and Myself, where we now live and places around us, things that we find interesting, amusing or just plain weird!
Thursday, 19 August 2021
According To Statistics,
bull riding is the world’s most dangerous organized sport,
recording
more catastrophic injuries and fatalities than any other contact sport, and above is Bodacious, photograph Yinka, the bull who was retired in his prime, in case he killed a rider! out of the
135 riders who tried to stay on his back for the required 8 seconds during his
career, Bodacious bucked off 127 of them, most in the first second or two. And
some of those who succeeded the first time got a taste of the bull’s revenge on
their second attempt, Tuff
Hedeman, a four-time world champion and one of the best bull riders to ever do
it, got the best of Bodacious in 1993, at a rodeo in Long Beach, California,
delivering what many described as a near-perfect performance. But two years
later, at the world championships in Las Vegas, he drew Bodacious again, and
this time the bull got even…
The moment
he left the chute, Bodacious bucked forward with all his might, and Hederman
did what riders are supposed to do in that situation, he leaned forward and
flung his arm back as a counterbalance. But just as the rider was leaning
forward, Bodacious threw his big head back, smashing it square into Hedeman’s
face. The rider stayed on only to get head-butted by the bull a second time, Bodacious
broke every bone in Hedeman’s face below the eyes, and it took thirteen and a
half hours of reconstructive surgery and five titanium plates to partially
repair the damage. His sense of smell and taste never returned…
only seven
weeks after injuring Hedeman, Bodacious went up against rider Scott Breding at
the National Finals Rodeo. Knowing the bull’s reputation and what it had done
to Hedeman, Scott decided to wear a hockey mask for protection. Bodacious was
unimpressed, using the exact same tactic as seven weeks prior to fracture the
rider’s left eye socket,
the day
after Bodacious injured Scott Breding, Sammy Andrews withdrew the bull from all
competitions, claiming that he “didn’t want to be the guy who let him kill
someone”. Bodacious was only seven at the time, in the prime of his life as a
rodeo bull, but too much of a risk for any rider, “It’s
probably true that the bull scared cowboys into allowing themselves to be
sling shotted. Every bull rider’s worst fear is getting jerked down onto a
bull’s head, and cowboys who stayed on Bodacious beyond the first two jumps
usually got hurt,” Jo Deurbrock once wrote, “Of all the
bulls I’ve ever seen, he’s the most dangerous,” Hedeman once told a Sports
Illustrated reporter about Bodacious. “Even top-ranked guys who weren’t
afraid of anything were definitely afraid of Bodacious. You’d see world
champions ride him for a jump or two and then get off.”
photograph Ty Murray on Bodacious 1993 NFR, but it was not always that way, the Half
Charolais and half Brahman started his life in 1988 as a scrawny calf, and at
age three he didn’t really show much promise as a rodeo bull. Sumner doubted
that he would ever amount to anything, so he didn’t even bother naming him,
giving him the tag number J31 instead, “I was
thinking, ‘Dude, you’re going to have to step up your game plan or you’re going
to be going to McDonald’s,'” Sumner told New
York Post‘s Burkhard Bilger a few years back, but then,
one day, something snapped in J31. The kid riding him at a small arena in
Okeene, Oklahoma, had gotten his hand caught in the bull’s rope and that didn’t
sit well with J31. He started bucking forward and kicking back, leaping into
the air, and by the time the rider fell, the bull had almost jumped over the
fence, and that was only the beginning! looking at the videos, rodeo bull riding is defiantly not for me!
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