COLORADO’S HAYES CHASING HISTORY ON RODEO CIRCUT
Before he was a world bareback champion, Keenan Hayes was a renegade rider on his family’s farm in rural Hayden.
“I started getting on pony broncs when I was about 10, after my dad bought a couple ponies that were little outlaws,” Hayes recalled. “I’d get on them and ride them all the time. Shoot, sometimes when nobody was home, I’d get on one and just do it myself.
“That probably wasn’t the best idea, but I did it, because (rodeo) is about how much grit and try you’ve got. You’ve got to put your head down and make it happen, if this is something you really want. I wasn’t supposed to ride alone, but if everyone was off working, I’d run them in (to the bucking chutes), put my (gear) on, and try to open the gate and flank them myself. Usually, I’d ride them and get off clean, but every now and again I’d get stepped on and be laying in the dirt alone like, ‘Oh, crap.’”
Fast-forward about a decade and those solitary moments on his family’s farm foretold Hayes’ rodeo greatness.
In 2023, Hayes became the first rookie to win a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world bareback title, and the first Colorado rider to do so since Bruce Ford in 1987. He finished with a single-season event earnings record of $434,050 while also winning Rookie of the Year, the Mountain States Circuit title and the National Finals Rodeo average title.
In other words: The 21-yearold’s 2023 season made him one of the sport’s preeminent stars, a year after registering a PRCA single-season permit record of $108,568. And he doesn’t plan on fading anytime soon.
“Nothing fazes him,” explained Keenan’s older sister, Kaitlynn Hayes. “Keenan would go to amateur rodeos
at 15, 16 years old and he made the (Colorado Pro Rodeo Association) finals riding against a bunch of 20-year-olds and kicking their butt. … He was always one or two steps ahead of where he needed to be. That’s kind of when we knew he was going to be what he is.”
Hayes is the top rodeo local to watch at this year’s National Western Stock Show in Denver, where he advanced to the bareback semifinals after another solid ride Friday afternoon. Last year at the NWSS, Hayes won his event in Colorado vs the World.
He’s realized the potential of that rodeo-obsessed little kid from Hayden, where he also grew up as an elite wrestler who took fourth in the CHSAA Class 2A state tournament at 138 pounds as a freshman.
“I noticed one major thing about Keenan that far back (in elementary and middle school) — he wanted to be great at everything he did,” said Casey Colletti, one of Hayes’ first riding coaches who is now a mentor and friend. “Every single night before bed, he did 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups (and 100 pull-ups). And he did 100 of each every morning before school. He was a very good wrestler, so he had the confidence. And the way he rode the spur board and the bucking machine was just outstanding… (When I coached him), he was like a little sponge.”
Hayes quit wrestling and football after his freshman year and transitioned from Hayden High School to online school after suffering a broken jaw while bull riding. It was the most serious rodeo injury Hayes has endured — worse than staples in his head and a broken collarbone.
All four bones in his lower jaw went up through his tongue, leading to a long hospital stay that put him behind in school. At that point, instead of cashing out his rodeo chips, he pushed them all to the center of the table. He ended up graduating from high school a year early and starting full-time on the amateur rodeo circuit at 17.
“You could tell (the broken jaw) messed with his head for a little while,” Kaitlynn Hayes said. “And two weeks before that, he got hung up on a bareback horse and drug around the arena and got sent to the hospital. So he had to get his confidence back. But after he did, he was unstoppable.”
Hayes stopped bull riding in 2021 to focus on bareback riding full-time, and to maintain his health for the latter discipline.
“You’ve never seen a happier dad than when he called me to tell me he was stopping bull riding,” Donny Hayes said. “He had finally seen the light, because people had been telling him for years, ‘Cut that bull rope up. Burn it. You’ve got too much going as a bareback rider to get hurt on a bull and lose it all.’ But he had to go out on his own terms, and he did so after winning in his only pro rodeo in bull riding at Lake Havasu.”
Even though Hayes loved bull riding, he admits it “turned out to be a pretty good idea” to turn all of his attention to bareback — a sport that his travel partner and fellow bareback rider, Wyatt Denny, said he was made for.
The 5-foot-6, 160-pound Hayes has a unique, nearly upright riding style, according to Denny, which means he doesn’t have to lay back as much on the horse. “That takes a lot of power away from the horses, because the horses want you back to throw you forward,” Denny said.
Even though Hayes has impeccable technique and the gold buckle, his overall notoriety is still outpaced by the second most recent Rookie of the Year, Rocker Steiner. The Texas rider won
that honor in 2022, when Hayes was still competing on his permit. Both are elite talents, but they are polar opposites in personality.
While Hayes takes a humble, blue-collar approach to the sport, having had to work his way into barebacking’s upper echelon, the spotlight has been on Steiner since the day he walked into the arena.
Steiner comes from a storied rodeo family. His grandpa, Bobby, was the 1973 RCA bull riding world champion. His dad, Sid, was the PRCA steer wrestling world champion in 2002. The 20-year-old Rocker, who was an accomplished wakeboarder before he decided to pursue bareback riding, is known for being a showman, complete with a rockstar vibe and fiery attitude that got him pegged with $9,500 in fines at the 2022 National Finals Rodeo.
Denny is convinced that had Hayes decided to buy his PRCA card and go pro in 2022, he would’ve ousted Steiner for Rookie of the Year honors.
“He would’ve spanked him,” Denny said.
While the contrasts between two of the sport’s top riders are apparent, so too is Hayes’ desire to leave Steiner, and everyone else, in his dust. After finishing ninth at the NWSS in 2023, a title in the biggest rodeo in his home state is on his mind this January.
“I hope to be the best bareback rider there ever has been,” Hayes said. “That’s definitely the end goal.”