No breaking this bull rider
Well, he does break, but Mauney keeps on coming back
You can’t blame friends, family and fans for suggesting to J.B. Mauney a career change.
Maybe he should live the simple life in Mooresville, N.C. Raise cattle. Anything but riding bulls.
After last year’s wreck at the Calgary Stampede, a scary incident that saw the 31-year-old break and dislocate his free arm shoulder and narrowly miss being trampled on by a 1,200-pound Corey & Horst bull named Cowahbunga, you would think that alone would be enough to force him to quit. Not Mauney. Not a chance. “A lot of them are saying, ‘You’re getting too old, getting beat up. You need to hang ’em up,’” said Mauney on Tuesday, ahead of the start of Pool B competition at the 2018 Calgary Stampede. “I tell them politely, ‘They can kiss my a--. I’ll decide when I’m hanging ’em up.’”
A year ago, Mauney was transported from the Stampede infield to the hospital where he was assessed, given some painkillers, recommended for surgery and sent back to his hotel.
In typical cowboy fashion, he was there on Sunday in a sling, watching the richest day in rodeo (which he qualified for).
From Calgary, he flew to Dallas en route home and had surgery to insert a screw and 14 anchors in his shoulder.
“This isn’t the same sort of thing that most of the guys get fixed,” Dr. Tandy Freeman, the surgeon that performed the surgery on Mauney, told PBR.com. “Instead of the ligament tearing off the socket, his tore off the bone. It wasn’t just a little bit of the ligament. It tore off the entire front half of his shoul- der. And it tore the rotator cuff tendon completely off. I don’t know if I ever saw that tendon completely torn off. I have seen most of it torn off, but I never have seen it completely torn off.”
So, yes, the injury was serious. “They said the skin was ’bout the only thing holding it together,” said Mauney, who added that he has suffered more life-threatening injuries (liver laceration, bruised kidneys and spleen, collapsed lung). “They said it would be at least January before I’d be back riding bulls. But I kind of cut ’er a little short.”
Mauney was competing in November at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. He only managed to ride one bull for the full eight seconds and was bucked off the remainder of his rides.
But still, he was back.
Then Mauney tore his groin in New York at a PBR event in January.
Then he broke his back in Sioux Falls, S.D., in April.
So, yes, 2018 has been a writeoff for Mauney, one of the best and most technical bull riders in the world.
“Pretty much,” he admitted. “It’s about time to get things turned around and get things back on the right track. It happens in bull riding. Sometimes, you can hardly get injured. Then one thing happens and it snowballs and everything happens to you. Then, it’ll be like a light switch and you’re good to go.”
Mauney received a call last week from the Calgary Stampede, inviting him to come back to the scene of the crime and replace a rider who could no longer compete.
So there he was on Tuesday, riding a Kesler bull called Poker Chip to an 85.5-point ride, good enough for second place behind Derek Kolbaba, who put up 86.5 points on Tippin’ Point.
“I was kind of glad they invited me back because I need to redeem myself,” Mauney said. “It was a freak deal, what happened … it could have happened anywhere, at the practice pen, wherever. I don’t really think about it like that.”
NOTES
Jacobs Crawley of Boerne, Texas, and Rusty Wright of Milford, Utah, split first- and second-place money for a pair of 86.5-point rides in saddle bronc … Steven Dent of Mullen, N.E., won the day’s top cheque in bareback with an 88.5 score on Must Have … Steer wrestler Matt Reeves of Cross Plains, Texas, managed to produce the day’s winning time of 4.3 seconds … Tie-down roper Matt Shiozawa of Chubbuck, Idaho., threw down a 6.6-seconds performance, narrowly equalling his 6.5-second time in 2010 that captured the Calgary Stampede … Callahan Crossley of Hermiston, Ore., opened Pool B competition in barrel racing with a 17.22-second trip around the barrels.