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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