Riding the baddest bulls made him a legend. Then one broke his neck.

 

...Bull riders are not in charge. And that is a part of the draw — that feeling that they have hooked into an intense and massive primal force and are in something like cooperation with it. They put the lie to the notion of human sovereignty over nature.

In every other dangerous form of competition, “You’re still the one with your foot on the accelerator or the brake,” says former champion Ty Murray, now a commentator. “Even if we’re talking about mountain climbing, you’re still the one that’s deciding what level things are going to. But in bull riding, the bull is the one with the accelerator.”

There have been attempts to scientifically measure the forces that a rider experiences on an erratically bucking bull. One study using NASA-provided accelerometers showed that a bull weighing 1,700 or more pounds rearing explosively can exert a pull of 26 G-forces on a man. For context, an IndyCar wreck at 200 mph creates about 50 Gs. That’s just acceleration. Now mix in violence. The hind hoofs of a large bull generate a force of 106.3 kilonewtons. An Olympic boxer delivering a straight punch, just 3.4.

Mauney is not a big man. He is 5-foot-10 and a blade-thin 140 pounds. On a 1,700-pound bull, “he’s outmatched on a scale that you just can’t imagine,” says Tandy Freeman, who has treated bull riders for more than 30 years as part of PBR’s sports medicine program. Most of the injuries Freeman sees are head injuries. According to a paper titled “Rodeo Trauma: Outcome Data from 10 years of Injuries,” rodeo athletes suffer serious head injuries at a rate 15 per 1,000 rides, far outstripping any other sport. They’re 10 times more likely to suffer major injury than football players...more