WELCOME RODEO NEWS FANS

Ride 'em cowboy
by JAMES RAMPTON
Sat 3 Jun 2006

Adriano Moraes has one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The 36-year-old Brazilian is a professional bare-back bull-rider. Over the past 14 years in his sport, which has been run by the Professional Bull Rider (PBR) organisation since 1992, five people have died and hundreds have suffered serious physical damage.

Yet far from being scared, Moraes, who has twice held the title of world champion bull-rider, embraces the danger. He blithely brushes off the threat of fatality or grave injury as a mere occupational hazard.

It is moments before Moraes has to climb on to a raging bull at a PBR rodeo in Anaheim, California. He will have to strain every sinew of his body in a desperate effort to remain atop a frenetically bucking beast. If he manages to hang on with his one permitted hand for a full eight seconds - an eternity when you're on board a maddened bull - he will be in line for a 1 million (£533,000) prize.

Dressed in the most outrageous pair of flapping leather chaps this side of a Village People video, Moraes is about to undertake one of the most absurdly perilous tasks in modern sport - perhaps only bear-wrestling matches it for danger, and that is banned in most countries - and yet this archetypal macho man is sitting calmly in his dressing room, apparently without a care in the world. Looking almost laughably nonchalant, Moraes shrugs. "This is a tough-guy's sport. American football players think they're tough, yeah? Well, they should come play with us."

The rider, who is one of the stars of Rodeo World, an absorbing ten-part documentary series starting on British television this week which goes behind the scenes on the PBR circuit, claims the key to a successful ride is all in the mind.

"Every single time you ride a bull, you're going to get hurt," he says. "180 pounds getting on to 1,800 pounds - it's not a fair fight, is it? You can't be a whining mummy's boy in PBR.

"If you can endure pain, then this is for you. If not, stay at home."

"That's why PBR is so exciting. Other sports, like motorbike racing, are dangerous, but they have helmets and brakes and can always turn their machines off. But the bulls won't stop. Once the pen is opened, you're on your own and no one can help you. We try not to think about the fear factor."

To underline the borderline insanity of his chosen profession, Moraes gives me a quick medical bulletin. A man who remains at peak fitness by clocking up 2,000 sit-ups every day, he reveals, almost casually, "I've had nine surgical procedures requiring general anaesthetic. I've had at least 25 major injuries. I have plates and screws all over my body. Loose teeth, broken nose and collar bones - you name it, I've done it.

"What was the worst? When a bull gored me. His horn went 14 centimetres into my belly, but, thank God, it didn't touch any vital organs. I thought it was just a scratch - it didn't hurt that much."

Clearly, the 45 PBR riders are not built like the rest of us. "An injury that would keep you out of work for a couple of weeks won't stop us working the next day," carries on Moraes, a devout Catholic who lives on a ranch in Brazil with his wife and children. "I've ridden with broken ribs and torn biceps before. I've learnt how adaptable the human body is. If one part of you is really injured, the brain tells the other muscles to compensate." This is the sort of dedication that has made Moraes a Brazilian national hero.

Dr Tandy Freeman, the straight-talking medical director of the PBR, agrees that this sport goes way beyond "merely dangerous" into terrain marked "life-threatening". His diagnosis is that a rider incurs a major injury - which can entail everything from a cracked skull to a shattered spine - once every 15 rides.

As the season wears on, the doctor is patching up 80 per cent of the contestants before each rodeo. Wearing the obligatory cowboy hat, Freeman shakes his head as he assesses the risk factor in PBR. "Bull riding's dangerous, there's no doubt about it," he mutters. "Any time one of these guys mounts up to ride, it could be his last time. Virtually all of these guys have a friend who's either died or been crippled."

Rob Smets has, if anything, suffered even more severely than Moraes. This 47-year from Texas (where else?) is one of the PBR's three professional bullfighters. These are the individuals who put themselves in harm's way in order to distract the bulls after the rider has been thrown off. They prod and wave and shout at the bulls to save their pals from further punishment.

Nicknamed the Kamikaze Kid, Smets has broken his neck twice in the line of duty. On one occasion a maddened bull drove him head-first into the metal fence surrounding the rodeo arena.

Today he is dressed in an immaculate red Wrangler shirt, blue jeans and a belt whose buckle spells out the word "Champion" in big gold letters. Like so many of the riders, he is a committed Christian - they hold a prayer-meeting before every event.

This cowboy believes in doing things just so - for instance, he turns round the cowboy hat I have been lent, very politely pointing out that, "you should always wear the feather in the hat-band to the left". In his broad Texan accent, Smets declares that "if you do the fundamentals right as a bullfighter, you should win more than you lose.

"But it's like boxing - you have always to remember that sooner or later you're going to get knocked on your ass. Then you'll find out just how much heart God gave you. You can think you're the man, but something will always jump up and bite you. It's not if it's going to happen, it's when and how bad."

For all that, Smets has never lost his love for the sport. "Even when I broke my neck, I never thought, 'this is too much'. Whenever I was injured, I always wanted to get straight back to fighting the bulls."

It is this risk that lies at the heart of PBR's appeal. It's like Formula One: although they would probably never admit it, many people watch that sport as much for the crashes as for the thrilling overtaking manoeuvres. We are voyeuristic creatures. Danger sells.

"The near misses give you a buzz," Smets confirms. "Fans don't want to see anyone hurt real bad. But when people go to Nascar [stock-car racing] they want see some fender rubbing. Well, they'll certainly see some fender rubbing here. All the odds are against us - it's a flirting-with-disaster deal. But if this sport was easy, everyone would do it. It takes a special breed."

Before the rodeo in Anaheim, LeAnn Stilley, a wannabe Country and Western star with sparkly white teeth, treats the crowd to an impassioned rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. She is the immaculately groomed fiancée of one of PBR's biggest stars, JW Hart, who glories in the moniker of the Iron Man. A charismatic, yet taciturn, 31-year-old Oklahoma cowpoke, he has clearly used Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name as a role-model.

Backstage, LeAnn sighs that the threat of injury comes with the territory in PBR. Whenever her partner mounts a bull, she can barely bring herself to watch. At the end of every ride she phones his parents to reassure them that he has emerged unscathed. "My stomach starts getting 20,000 butterflies when JW's name gets called out," she says. "I just say my prayer and hold my breath."

But everyone else in the 10,000-strong audience is lapping it up. "The crowd love the danger," LeAnn says. "If you come to these rodeos, you're always going to see something spectacular happen. I hate the Jerry Springer Show, but if people are fighting on it, I can't help watching it. It's just human nature."

This inherent danger has also propelled PBR into the position of America's fastest growing sport - attendances rose by 52 per cent at PBR rodeos between 2002 and 2004.

That boom has been mirrored on television. US network NBC now transmits 450 hours of primetime programming from the 32 PBR events that take place every year. If it continues to grow at such a rate, PBR may soon be overtaking the popularity of such recognised US sports as baseball and American football.

The riders have also attained superstar status. Cheered on by such celebrity fans as Kiefer Sutherland and Tom Selleck, the top cowboys have been taken on by serious Tinseltown talent managers such as the William Morris Agency. Possessing lantern jaws and tight jeans, the riders have all the allure of movie stars - there are no shortage of blonde groupies thronging the stage door in Anaheim - and can earn salaries to match.

The rodeo I witness at the Arrowhead Pond Stadium - usually home to the Mighty Ducks ice hockey team - certainly boasts the kind of unashamed showbiz glitz that they have pioneered down the road in Hollywood. Prior to the rodeo, the riders parade around the ring to the sort of cacophonous acclaim that must have greeted gladiators before the games in the Roman arena.

Moraes thinks that the PBR circus will just carry on expanding. "Where America goes, everyone else soon follows. PBR has also gone global because cattle is such a universal business nowadays. Wherever there are cattle, there are cowboys and rodeo. Pretty soon we'll be showing Chinese rodeos - after all, they now have more cattle than anyone else on the planet."

The other reason the sport is flourishing is because it mines the very deep-rooted cowboy myth in the States. In an era when Americans no longer have to circle the wagons and fight off the Apaches, bull riding is the most direct means of tapping into your inner cowboy. Like a heterosexual version of the lead characters in Brokeback Moutain, the PBR riders epitomise the frontier spirit.

Moraes reckons that the bull-riders - who revel in such names as Bowdy Peach, Tray Traweek and Travis Briscoe - strike such a resonant chord with US audiences because "the West is getting so much more urbanised these days, and for many city-dwellers the cowboy represents an escape valve. Watching a cowboy film or going to a rodeo, you can put yourself into his position. He's free - and for most people, that's a dream. He's a heroic figure, fulfilling everyone's dream of freedom."

In addition, fans are attracted by the bull-riders' motto: "cowboy up" (the rough British translation of which would be "show some backbone").

"Within the cowboy culture, you're expected to 'cowboy up'. That's like your expression, 'stiff upper lip'. However badly you've been hurt, you don't make a fuss - you just get back up again and get on with it," says Freeman.

That certainly occurs several times at the Arrowhead Pond Stadium. I'm standing on a platform above the pen containing some of the 50 bulls that will be used tonight. At five feet tall and four feet wide, they are mighty beasts. It is not hard to see why these magnificent specimens are valued at up to half a million dollars (£267,000) apiece.

Against the bars, they are sharpening their scarily jagged horns, potentially lethal weapons which you would not want to be on the end of. When you're up close, these creatures exude an awesome sense of latent power.

They unleash that power the moment the side-door of the pen is opened. As if subjected to 20,000 volts, they jerk out in a frantic bucking motion designed to unseat all but the most hardy riders. When the cowboys come crashing to the ground - which some do after just a half a second - the bulls invariably charge at them.

Squaw Butto, the bizarrely-named bull ridden by poor old JW Hart, shakes him off after a mere 1.4 seconds. As he lies motionless on the ground, the beast savagely butts the rider twice in the chest. The stricken body of JW is hurriedly stretchered off to the medical room.

As we wait outside for a news update, I ask some of the other riders anxiously milling around why they continue to participate in this most death-defying of pastimes. Moraes stresses that he can't not ride bulls, "our biggest motivation is passion, money is secondary".

For his part, Brendon Clark, a little 25-year-old Australian who presumably joined the PBR because Aussie Rules Football wasn't life-endangering enough, asserts that bull riding is "what I think about all day. I get up in the morning and think about it. I sit there and watch TV and think about it. I talk to people on the phone and think about it. Even talking to you, I'm thinking about it. That's just how bad I want it."

There is a loud cheer from the assembled company of riders as the news filters out that despite fracturing several ribs, JW feels as right as rain.

Later, he explains to me the irresistible buzz he gets from bareback bull riding and why he keeps coming back for more. "You just have to accept the injury rate - that's part of life. If you have a car wreck on the way to the grocer's, you don't stop going to the grocer's.

"You also have to accept that for just a second, there's nobody in the world who can help you. There's a chance that you could get hurt or killed, but you're desperate to conquer this bull. It wants you off, but you want to stay on and win the battle. It's competition at its best. Man versus beast - you can't get no better than that."

Coming out of the medical room after assessing the condition of the aptly named Hart, Freeman blows out his cheeks with relief that the injury is not more serious. He pauses, tips back his ten-gallon hat and sums up the true grit that is a prerequisite for any PBR rider. "Cissies," the doctor asserts in a tone that brooks no contradiction, "just don't make it at this level."

Read more at the Scotsman