High Heels, Heartbreak, and Hope

Photo by Covy Moore

“You can’t always get what you want,

But if you try sometimes, you just might find,

You get what you need.”

-The Rolling Stones

August 4, 2022.

Lovington, New Mexico.

272 High Heels - Pete Carr Pro Rodeo.

On paper, this was a great match up. High Heels and I had never crossed paths before, and I was excited for the opportunity. This National Finals Rodeo (NFR) selected bucking horse carried a reputation for being “a bit of a bucker,” that is, more difficult to ride than most. Game on: I love getting on the buckers.

“She rides great, a bit tough to get off of though.”

When I asked fellow bareback riders who had tangled with her in the past, this was the most common report I received. The insight was helpful, but not alarming: I had been on plenty of horses over the years that were difficult to ride after the whistle, and almost always found a way to make it to the pick-up men for a safe dismount. No sweat, I’ve got this.

“That should fit you good.”

Even better. It looked like I was going to keep rolling through a profitable week of rodeo.

I was having a great season, one of the best in my 9 years as a professional rodeo cowboy. With less than 2 months remaining in the regular season, it was time to make a move. It was time to finish strong.

The clouds hung low, purple-grey and ominous as lightning licked the horizon around the Lea County Fairgrounds. The routine preparations of the bareback riders had been completed: Gloves were rosined. Arms were taped. Bodies were warm. All that was left was the doing.

Lightning delay.

“Take a load off boys, we’ll update you when we know anything. Could be 30 minutes, could be 3 hours.”

An often overlooked skill in the sport of rodeo is that of arousal control: the ability to consciously manipulate your emotional state. There is a delicate balance between overstimulation and apathy: you want to be excited, but not out of control. You want to be calm, but not lackadaisical. When your motor is already running and then there’s an unanticipated delay, you need to know how to conserve your adrenaline: it’s a powerful but finite resource in this winner-take-all economy of peak performance.

I focused on the breath.

I watched the sponsor flags ripple softly in the breeze.

I paced to keep the body moving.

45 minutes later, the lightning had passed over. The horses were loaded. It was time to get it on.

“Spur this son-of-a-bitch.”

Thanks Redo. My gloved left hand wedged tight in my rigging, my hat sucked down flush to my eye brows, it was my turn. A deep breath and a big nod.

She left the chute quickly—too quickly. At the 2-second mark she stumbled, dropping to her front knees. I stayed hooked. As she swapped ends for the next two jumps and then arced across the arena, I matched her jump for jump. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the whistle blow. The faintest remnant of a memory crossed my mind about riding her all the way through to the pick-up man.

In rodeo, unlike in martial arts, the punches don’t stop at the sound of the bell. For an 8-second bareback ride, you have to be prepared to fight for 15, 20, even 30 seconds before the job is done. Your ride isn’t over until you’ve got two feet safely in the dirt. I knew that this great bucking horse would be more difficult the longer I was on her.

Here goes nothing.

For all of my plans of executing a perfect dismount, I got very little say in the matter. Before I could reach down to double grab, I was airborne. My legs arched behind my body, catapulting me into orbit. With my hand still securely locked in my rigging and the soles of my boots pointed towards the heavens, I learned the hard way that some horses live up to their names:

Now I know why they call her High Heels.

Call it luck, or call it 12 years experience, but while violently cartwheeling through the air, I was able to guide my weight off the left side of High Heels’ body. Being a left-handed bareback rider, this ensured I wouldn’t get hung up to the back of the bucking horse. A bad situation can always be worse.

Towards the end of my high-speed aerial acrobatics I felt it, like the tearing of Velcro somewhere in my shoulder. With the weight of my 195 pound frame hitting the end of my arm being the only thing forcing my hand from the rigging, something had to give. While the tape saved my wrist and the orthotic arm brace saved my elbow, that left my shoulder to pay off the debt. Or was it my bicep? I wasn’t sure, but I knew it hurt.

Now, I am no stranger to pain. My injury rap sheet is extensive, and decorated with such accolades as torn groins, avulsed abdominals, ruptured biceps, concussions, and more broken bones than I can assign a number to—each one a hard-earned battle scar from a lifetime spent pushing my own limits. As a result, I have also spent many years vigorously preparing to mitigate the risk of such injuries occurring again in the future.

But in a sport predicated on one’s ability to manage the uncontrollable, you have to expect the unexpected.

The red-sand arena floor came up quickly to meet me. Front flip completed, I came to a full stop in a seated position on my left hip. The dry, desert, New Mexico air was all around me, I could feel it on my face. Unfortunately however, I was having trouble getting any in my lungs. I worked to catch my breath as I slowly took stock of my situation.

A lot goes through your head in that 15-seconds you spend alone in the middle of the arena. In a blink, your week, month, season, and even your whole career can flash before your eyes.

Was that my bicep again?

How bad is it?

Will I be able to ride tomorrow?

The torrent of thoughts racing through my head gave way to the sound of arena announcer Andy Stewart’s voice echoing around me. Ears ringing, I didn’t get the full story, but I caught enough of it:

…orange flag…

…stumble…

…option…

“I’ve had enough for 20 men, and he calls up re-ride.”

-Chris LeDoux

Shit. Can I ride right now?

High Heels’ stumble just outside the chute gate qualified me for a re-ride, but I’ll admit that I didn’t spend much time entertaining the notion of going again. I didn’t even ask what the re-buck horse was. Like I said, some pre-verbal, ancient, and more intuitive part of my brain knew that I wasn’t in very good shape.

Left arm hung gingerly by my side, I made my way out of the arena. One of the judges motioned to me questioningly by moving his index finger in a small circle: the universally recognized signal for “re-ride?” I grimaced and shook my head in the negative; 79 points was all it would be.

Before I even made it to the Justin Sport’s Medicine Trailer, my mind had already shifted into overdrive, rationalizing and convincing myself that it wasn’t that bad. I would be fine. A couple Tylenol and maybe a little extra tape, I’d be riding within the week. Maybe tomorrow in Sidney, Montana, just a short 1,233 mile, all-night drive away. My mind was racing.

I have great horses drawn this week.

I’m riding better than ever.

I’m hungry—starving.

I want this more than I’ve ever wanted it.

But if rodeo has taught me one thing, it’s that you don’t always get what you want.

Over the next few weeks, I would come to learn the extent of my trouble. As my arm hyperextended behind my body, the sternal head of my pectoralis major ruptured completely. Put simply, the main muscle in my chest responsible for simple acts like a push-up, or stabilizing my shoulder while riding, was no longer functioning. I would need surgery—my third in the last 5 years.

My season hung in the balance. I was ranked 4th in the Canadian standings, with my first legitimate shot at a Canadian title. I was ranked within the top 25 in the World standings, with my first NFR qualification not out of the question.

How could this happen again?

The last time I found myself in this position (although not the first) was only one state over in Westcliffe, Colorado in July of 2020. Sitting 16th in the World Standings at the time, I found myself sprawled on the arena floor after having ruptured several groin and abdominal muscles from my pelvis during the ride. Between the surgery, recovery, and rehabilitation periods, that injury sidelined me for almost 9 months.

It was heartbreaking to be doing that well and have it all torn away, and I had swore to myself that time would be the last time.

Yet, here I was again, staring down the barrel of another season-ending injury. Surgery was an inevitability: I was going to need that pec for both rodeo and the rest of my life. The problem was that the post-op recovery time was 4-6 months.

The question was when to get the surgery.

Could I ride without it, at least for now? Could I find a way to get through the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR), now only 2.5 months away? It looked like there simply wasn’t enough time left in the season to make a serious run at the NFR in my condition, but could I find a way to not allow another year to be a total wash?

I got expert opinions.

I rationalized some more.

I scrambled.

I clung desperately to a season that was rapidly slipping away.

On final analysis, the answer to the question of whether I could ride or not without surgery was a resounding “maybe.” This particular injury isn’t frequently reported in bareback riders, so I didn’t have a lot of real world experience to base my decision on. I had to weigh my options. I had to take a look at my goals.

The question then changed from, “Can I ride?” to, “Can I compete to the best of my ability?”

The CFR is no joke. Canada produces some of the strongest and best bucking horses in the world, and 6 horses in 5 days is a test to even the strongest and best of bareback riders. The competition is no joke either. To win Canada you need to make 6 great rides on 6 great horses against 11 elite bareback riders.

And I don’t just want to participate, I want to win.

Sure, I could probably ride, but did I have a legitimate shot at a Canadian title? If I did choose to stick it out and try to get through the CFR, I knew I wouldn’t be my best, and I would still need surgery afterwards. That’s 4-6 months pushed back another 2.5 months to late-November or early-December. That puts me out until May or June. That would remove me from competing in Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, the American, and more.

But was I willing to give up the CFR and a shot at a Canadian Title? The number of trips to a finals of any calibre in rodeo is limited, and extremely difficult to walk away from. This had been far and away my best regular season in Canada: I didn’t want to lose it.

I found myself in a catch-22, damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

It was a tough call, trying to decide whether to leverage away half of next season in order to try to finish this one. Or deciding if trading away the wins and progress made this year is worth it for the potential victories of years to come. Friends, family, and medical professionals from Texas to Alberta gave me their opinions.

But nobody could make the decision for me: it was one I would have to make alone.

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I opted for surgery as soon as possible.

The week that followed was rough: Disappointment, despair, anger, shame, and frustration flooded my consciousness. I felt sorry for myself. I sulked. I brooded. Worse than the pain of having to sit out the rest of the season and the CFR, I was angry that something like this had happened again. I had spent so much time and effort in order to be as physically prepared as possible. Like Cain before God, I railed at the realization that my years of sacrifice had not been deemed worthy—again.

I took it personally.

While I’m not necessarily proud of the depths my mind went to, I am not sure I could have proceeded forward without a quick trip to my own mental Hell. In my experience, repressing negative thoughts and emotions only causes them to return later, darker and stronger than they were in the first place. I needed to let them out, feel them, and use them for fuel. Additionally, these feelings of anger and heartbreak illuminated something to me: I still cared. I still wanted it.

Nothing deals death to a passion quicker than indifference.

I cannot speak for everyone, but for me, there is a big difference between mental toughness and blind optimism. This hurt, it sucked, and I wasn’t going to pretend like it didn’t. The pain of tearing muscle from bone pales in comparison to the pain of losing what you’ve spent years working towards. But rodeo has also taught me something worth more than every dollar I’ve earned in the arena: resilience. Over the years I’ve been knocked down, knocked out, and had the wind knocked out of me. That’s all part of the game. Buck offs are inevitable, but I learned how to get back up.

Shit happens. The only question is, what are you going to do about it?

A silver lining to going through the quantity of injuries that I have is, while the ground doesn’t get any softer, you do learn to bounce better. Rather than spending weeks or months in the dark recesses of my mind, this time around it only took me a few days to move on. I’ve learned the hard way that feeling sorry for myself, seeing myself as a victim, or cursing my own bad luck only impedes forward progress. Spending too long indulging in these forms of insidious self-sabotage is a waste of precious time and energy.

With my shoulder and my pride both sporting fresh purple bruises, I took a look inside and knew that I still had work to do. Sure it would be a long, slow road back to the rodeo arena, but wallowing wouldn’t get me there any faster. I had to turn the page. I needed to get my feet moving again.

“If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken,

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools;

Or watch the things you’ve gave your life to, broken,

And stoop, and build ‘em up with worn out tools.”

-Excerpt from If— by Rudyard Kipling

All athletes get injured. It’s nothing personal, it’s just the business. I know the risks of this sport better than most, and I know that it certainly could have been a lot worse. Steeled with the old resolve, I opened my mind to the boundless opportunity that the future still held.

Once I reframed my situation, my downtrodden attitude gave way to the inverse emotions of hope, passion, and perhaps most importantly, gratitude. While I do not expect the bitter sting of disappointment to ever fade completely, I am grateful to still have the opportunity to pursue rodeo as my vocation—not everyone gets that chance. Regardless of the setbacks I’ve experienced in this sport, I still get to do it.

I often find myself thinking back to remember old friends I’ve made in rodeo that I don’t see much anymore. I reflect on some that I competed with in high school or college rodeo, who were great cowboys and athletes. Many were men with a lot more talent than me, who should have had long and prosperous careers in professional rodeo, but life happens along the way: some injuries just don’t heal, a young man’s dreams can give way to family priorities, or the old flame can burn out.

I don’t rodeo because I have to, I rodeo because I love it. I love the challenges it provides to me. I love that it consistently calls me to be a better, stronger, and mentally tougher version of myself. I love trying to ride the buckers. I am very lucky to still get to do what I do—to wake up every morning and chase a dream.

I’ll be back.

-Lamb.

“In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always take note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock.”

-Seneca, Letters from a Stoic