SUNDRE – Coming away undaunted after recently falling short of making the Calgary Stampede pro bull riding final showdown, a local cowboy found some consolation at a Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event in Kelowna where he defeated the defending champion.
“It was honestly probably one of the best events I’ve ever rode at,” said Wyatt Gleeson.
“It was just action packed the whole time; the crowd was really engaged. When the crowd is really engaged like that, it makes us ride better. There’s kind of like an electricity in the air; it’s hard to explain, but it’s a pretty cool feeling when they are like that.”
After the Stampede, Gleeson competed northwest of Grande Prairie at a rodeo in Teepee Creek where he scored a run of 69 before getting back on the road to Kelowna with a convoy cohort comprised of fellow cowboys Ashton Sahli and Brock Radford.
Gleeson rode two bulls on Thursday, July 20. The first, a young little black bull called Bow Me Over that “turned back into my hand,” gave him a ride that judges scored at 84.5 points, putting him in third place and earning him a spot in the short-round in which he picked a bull called Wolf Bait.
“I’d been watching him all spring; he’s been really consistent, really good. They’ve been winning rodeos and events on him, so figured I would get a pretty good score on him,” said Gleeson, adding he managed to hang in there to score 88 points.
At that point, it was a matter of waiting and seeing whether any of the other contenders could top that. But in the end, Gleeson came out ahead of the pack, with Sahli taking third and Radford in second.
“We ended up walking away with most all of the money at that event,” he said.
Asked how defeating the defending champion felt, Gleeson said, “Well, it’s not necessarily like you’re beating somebody else because first and foremost, you have to beat your animal, and if you don’t do that then you can’t beat anyone. So, it’s never really on your mind to beat anyone else.”
In other words, the competition first and foremost is between the animal and the self.
“Rodeo is kind of the only sport that really you’re cheering for your competitor just because of the danger factor; we don’t want to see anyone get hurt,” he said.
“And when you do see a good ride ahead of you, it just makes you ride better.”
That all being said, he added Radford is quite a capable bull rider.
“He’s been one of the best in the country for quite a few years,” said Gleeson. “So, when you do beat good guys like Brock and Ashton, I guess it helps the confidence a little bit more. But it was even better that we won first, second and third as a team.”
Gleeson said he and Radford go a long way back to their adolescent years and added they fairly regularly travel to rodeos together.
“Ashton Sahli, he’s a few years younger than us, but he’s a real big talent and he tries his butt off every time. So, it’s definitely good to travel with someone who tries that hard and has the want to win,” he said. “Really, I was more happy that we won as a team.”
Right after Kelowna, Gleeson was off to Kennedy, Sask., where a miscalculation on the order of events – the bull riding ended up being first up on the docket – resulted in a frantic, last minute dash, he said.
“It was just a mad rush to get all of our equipment together and to get set,” he said, adding none of the three cowboy companions had much luck on that morning of Saturday, July 22.
“So, we kind of decided to enter a PBR bull riding (event) in Manor, Saskatchewan,” he said, adding that was later the same day and that fortune was more favourable as he finished in second with a ride of 83.5 points.
Competing in Morris, Man. the next day on July 23, the long hours perhaps started having an impact as despite getting a decent start with some good rides, they were ultimately unable to place among finalists taking home titles and prize money.
Once again back on the road for a roughly 14-hour drive home, Gleeson was this time around planning to take a brief reprieve from the nearly non-stop summer rodeo schedule to go out camping and fishing not far from Sundre somewhere along Coal Camp Road for a couple of days with his five-year-old son Nixon, who’s shown an early interest in mutton busting.
“I don’t think he really wants to ride bulls, but I think he wants to be a bull fighter,” said Gleeson.
But after enjoying an opportunity to bond with his son, Gleeson said he’d be right back on the road and planned to compete this past Saturday in Medicine Hat, where that time he was the defending champion for that rodeo’s bull riding event.
“I won it last year,” he said, recalling a ride on a bull named Jack Knife that scored him 88 points.
From there, the schedule won’t be getting any lighter, with plans to ride just about every other day in places including High Prairie, Strathmore, Regina, Grimshaw, La Crete, and Dawson Creek.
