Word: bulls
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...dung-and-sawdust scented world of bull riding, the verb ride is precisely defined. It does not mean "to sit atop a bucking, spinning, hurtling, heaving beast that wants nothing more than to throw you to kingdom come." That is merely to get on the bull. To ride it you must get on and stay there-for eight seconds. Which, in layman's time, is about six seconds longer than impossible...
...sandy arena out the back of Rockhampton's Great Western Hotel on this Saturday night, 45 cowboys in cocky white straw hats and cautious padded vests will lower themselves onto the back of a close-penned bull, wedge one hand under the rope around its chest, an`d wait for the ring-ward side of the pen to be pulled open. But only 11 will ride the bull, and only four will know the glory of doing it twice. The rest will-in the time it takes several hundred steak-sandwich-chomping onlookers to gasp-be tossed...
...stays parked tonight, but Brian Duggan says most cowboys take that particular ride eventually. Duggan, 27-who didn't ride his bull but didn't need first aid either-has had a broken arm, leg, jaw and eye socket, and a couple of busted knees. "We're pretty tough-bred people that do this," he says...
...What separates bull riding from many other sports is fear, says Glen Young, who runs events for Professional Bull Riding Australia: "You're in a ring with an animal that weighs a ton and wants to kill you." The wages of fear in Australia are modest. Tonight's winner will collect $2,800 and a DVD player; the national champion, if he has a good year, can earn $40,000. But he'll also get a shot at November's world championship in Las Vegas, worth seven million American bucks...
...what's the key to success in bull riding? "Have fun," says Duggan-and he's not joking. His cousin Anthony Everingham, 27, who did ride a bull tonight, agrees: "You've got to be switched on, get your mind thinking right, forget about the pain and the danger, and relax." If you can do that, "the rush is amazing," says Duggan, who, like Everingham, lives near Rocky and started riding poddy calves at 13. "The more you do it, the more you want to come back and back." It's as much a mental game as a physical...