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t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 7 17 G rowing up in Kountze, Texas, a small town outside of Beaumont, Cody Teel was gripped by the idea of becoming a bull rider like his father. "My dad was a bull rider before I was born, so I grew up hearing stories he would tell about his days as a rider," Teel said, as he dropped feed for cattle at his wife's family's ranch near College Station, Texas. "When I was younger, I would just sit and study a list of all the rodeos and the days. I used to pretend like I was entering them and put them in my schedule." As the herd of cattle came in to feed, Teel, 24, recalled his early days as a rider. Before he was 10, he was riding calves. By the time he reached high school, he was a full-blown rodeo competitor. But as his success as a bull rider grew, so did his list of injuries. "I had had a few minor injuries—broken ribs, bro- ken fingers—before my first major one in 2010," Teel said. "It was my rookie year and a bull's head hit me in the stomach and ruptured my small intestine. So I had to go back, get that fixed, and then I had to go back a second time because of issues with the scar tissue." The injury put Teel in the hospital for three weeks and out of competition for four months, an eternity for a bull rider. "Taking time off becomes a financial strain for the riders," said Taylor Brown, M.D., Houston Methodist Hospital orthopedic surgeon and captain of the sports medicine team for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. "It's not like other professional sports where they have a contract. Those athletes have a salary and they get paid even when they are out. These guys don't get any money if they don't ride." Another stark difference between professional bull riding and other professional sports is the length of the season. The regular season for riders spans 11 months, while the regular season for professional basketball and football players lasts approximately six months. In addition, bull riders who make it past the regular season spend most of their month off in Las Vegas at the National Finals Rodeo (NFR). And unlike other professional athletes, bull riders pay their own way to travel to the numerous rodeos they enter each year. "I'll go until I go broke," Teel said. "You have to go to a minimum of 40 rodeos per year to get your points to go to the NFR in December, so I probably enter 100 to 110 rodeos a year and then I go to 80 or 90, sometimes more. I get on 150 to 200 bulls a year." In American bull riding, a rider grips a rope that wraps around the chest of the bull. To earn a score, a rider must stay on the bull for eight seconds with one hand on the rope and the other in the air. One major injury every year Over the course of his seven-year professional career, Teel has competed in roughly 600 rodeos, won more than $1 million in prizes and has had at least one major injury every year—a fact that is somewhat remarkable to Brown. (continued) A Bull Rider's B R E A K S DESPITE INJURIES, RODEO CHAMPION CODY TEEL HANGS ON By Britni N. Riley