Buck Wild

On any other weekend in Manhattan, Eli Vastbinder would have looked terribly out of place. 

But as he strolled down 10th Avenue in early 2023, the professional bull rider from Statesville, North Carolina, was just one of thousands of rodeo lovers bedecked in denim jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat. 

Vastbinder was there along with 34 of the world’s other top bull riders to compete in the Professional Bull Riders Association’s Monster Energy Buck Off, a three-day contest held in January at Madison Square Garden.

Vastbinder had been PBR’s Rookie of the Year in 2021. He was 30 at the time—ancient for this bone-breaking sport—and the second oldest ever to earn the honor. But he wasn’t really a rookie to the sport; it was just the first year he competed full-time on the PBR’s most competitive tour, called Unleash the Beast. 

Vastbinder grew up in a rodeo family in Ohio and moved to North Carolina as a teenager. “I started out riding sheep,” he said. “I was riding those in diapers. Then I advanced to calves, steers, junior bulls, and bulls.” He played football and wrestled in high school, “but rodeoing is all I ever wanted to do,” he said.

The rules of bull riding are simple. With one hand, a rider grips a rope secured to the bull. The rider’s free hand must avoid touching the bull, or one’s own body, and stay on the 1,500 to 1,800 pounds of ornery muscle for eight seconds to earn any points at all. Get bucked off sooner and it’s a zero. 

After eight seconds, the rider throws their own body off the bull and receives a score of up to 100 from four judges, based on both the rider’s performance and the bull’s. As in gymnastics, the degree of difficulty counts.

The three-day event at Madison Square Garden featured deafening firework displays, patriotic singing performances, and salutes to the armed forces before the bull-riding action. Aside from New York’s unique chaos outside the arena, there was little that distinguished the atmosphere from other major rodeos in other parts of the country. Vastbinder said he hadn’t enjoyed the event the previous year, citing Covid restrictions. “We basically were just shuttled back and forth from the arena to the hotel,” he said. 

This year, Vastbinder never lasted long enough for the judges to weigh in. In his three rounds, the closest he came was 7.18 seconds, and he walked away from the event without any prize money. “Sometimes in your head, you know you’re close, and you weaken just a bit,” Vastbinder told me a few weeks later at his home. “Suddenly, you’re in a bad position and you’re thrown off.”

Vastbinder’s performance wasn’t an outlier. Of the 40 riders who competed at the event, 17 failed to last to eight seconds, and 20 walked away from the event, like him, with no money. The winner of the event, Jose Vitor Leme, took home $45,825, and even he failed to last eight seconds in one of his rounds. 

“The bulls are so good that nobody rides them all,” said Gary Leffew, a 79-year-old former world champion bull rider, who runs a training academy in California. “For most of the pros, it’s like baseball, and you’ll do alright if you make it a third of the time.”

A Rockstar for Country People

Growing up, Vastbinder was in awe of professional cowboys. “They didn’t have regular jobs and traveled around the country together and always had pockets full of money,” he said. “It looked like the lifestyle of a rockstar for country people.”

North Carolina isn’t a rodeo hotbed like Texas and other areas West of the Mississippi River. “But it’s a good place to learn the sport,” said Jerome Davis, a retired bull rider from Archdale, who in 1995 became the first rider East of the Mississippi to win the world championship. “There are a lot of junior rodeos, and just about every weekend you can get on a bull.”

Vastbinder’s wife, Paige, grew up in a Statesville rodeo family that produced local rodeos and raised bulls. But North Carolina doesn’t have a top-tier Professional Bull Rider event—which Vastbinder was determined to do—meaning out-of-state travel to compete at the higher levels of the sport. 

“I started riding full-time at 18 and didn’t feel like I had any other appealing options,” he said. Vastbinder and his wife shared a trailer home with other rodeo couples in the early days, spending up to 10 months of the year on the road. 

Those first few years were financially difficult. “It took me about three years before I made enough to cover my expenses and another five to make a decent living,” he said.

At five-foot-ten, Vastbinder is about six inches taller than most bull riders, an inherent disadvantage in the sport. “I have that much more to control, and it’s easier for me to be top heavy,” he said. 

After an early win that netted him a $10,000 check, Vastbinder went to live in Santa Rosa, California, to train with Leffew—a move he credits with teaching him the fundamentals. 

Most bull riders are taught to pull as tight as possible on the rope, Leffew said. “But that keeps you behind the rope, and we teach you to ride in front of the rope.” A tall rider like Vastbinder, Leffew said, can overcome disadvantages by riding up on his legs and setting his hips.

Bull riders can’t practice their sport like other professional athletes. Novack Djokovic can play practice sets and Lebron James can scrimmage with relatively little risk of injury. But a bull rider is foolish to spend significant time atop world class bulls outside of competition. 

Instead, they turn to various mechanical barrel devices to simulate the up-and-down bucking motion, and they cross-train. When Leffew started his academy, his daughter was taking show-jumping equestrian classes. “I saw that it’s almost the identical technique as the bull riding I teach, so now all my guys do jump horse riding,” he said.

There’s another downside to being tall in this sport. “There’s more of me for a bull to step on,” Vastbinder said. “The biggest danger is a bull stepping on you.”

Like most of his peers, Vastbinder can rattle off a list of injuries. “I have plates and screws in my legs,” he said. “I’ve broken my face and all my ribs.” 

In the third round of the 2021 PBR world finals, he was thrown and stomped by a bull named Whiskey Bent, separating his shoulder and breaking multiple ribs. Afterward, Vastbinder had trouble breathing and could barely bend over to take off his boots, but he soldiered on, besting two more bulls and winning the Rookie of the Year honor.

The risk of much more serious injury is constant. 

It’s a risk Davis knows well. His own riding career ended tragically on March 14, 1998, at a competition in Fort Worth when he was bucked off a bull and broke his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. And last February, 14-year-old rider Denim Bradshaw was killed at an event in Stokes County, North Carolina—his first bull-riding competition.

Physicians say that the injuries sustained in bull riding are similar to those they see in car accidents. And while bull riders are stoic about the dangers of their sport, loved ones are far less so. 

“We’ve been in rodeos and seen him hurt and drug out,” said a teary-eyed Mike Vastbinder in the recent docuseries, The Ride, which follows his son, Eli, and other top bull riders. “He’s been stepped on and broken ankles. You don’t want to see that out of your children. But he’s not going to give it up.”

At 32 years of age, Eli now realizes he doesn’t have many years of competition left. “Most folks on the tour are between 18 and 23,” he said. “There’s some older Brazilian guys, but most guys quit by the time they get to my age.”

Davis said he expects Vastbinder to smoothly transition to post-bull-riding life, working on the ranch and organizing local rodeos. Vastbinder said he may consider being PBR announcer or otherwise participate in the media-side of the sport. 

“It’s a hard lifestyle to leave,” Leffew said. “You make your money in eight seconds of work. A lot of guys have a hard time afterwards. The adrenaline rush is addicting,”

Back on the Bull

Vastbinder crashed out of Madison Square Garden, but a month later he placed third in Chicago, earning $11,465. He then failed to take home a paycheck in three consecutive events before taking first place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which earned him $42,321. 

It isn’t his only source of income. “Sponsorship is where the real money comes from,” he said. “You can win a couple hundred thousand in prize money a year, but you can match that in sponsorships.” 

Wrangler is Vastbinder’s primary apparel sponsor, but he also has deals with an Arizona auction company and a work boot manufacturer. 

Traveling expenses for bull riders are lower than other rodeo competitors. Calf ropers, for instance, must haul their horses between events, and spend tens of thousands of dollars on trucks, trailers, and fuel. “When we started the PBR [in 1992], our vision was to be able to fly out Friday morning, compete, and fly back home on Sunday,” Davis said.

Vastbinder spends his weeks at home with Paige and their young twin daughters. Their house in Statesville, which they largely built themselves with help from rodeo friends, is part of a bull-riding training compound that features an arena, mechanical bulls, and fields where they raise cows and horses. 

His priorities have shifted with the new responsibilities. “It used to be that me and the riders would do an event, go to a bar, grab a case of beer, and drive to the next rodeo,” he said. “Now, I don’t get much sleep at home with my young girls, so at events I’m often in bed early.”

Until recently, bull riding was exclusively an individual sport, or, more accurately, man versus beast. But in 2022, the PBR launched an 11-event Team Series, with eight teams and—like in professional football and basketball—a draft. The Carolina Cowboys, based in Greensboro, predictably picked 2022 PBR World Champion Daylon Swearingen first, and Vastbinder expected the team to grab him second. Instead, the Oklahoma Freedom made him their first-round pick.

The inaugural 2022 season was captured in The Ride, which is now streaming on Amazon. “The best sports documentaries have an element of danger,” said director Micah Brown. “Bull riding has a physicality that other sports don’t. In boxing, if you get knocked out, you don’t sign up for another fight the next week.”

Vastbinder, one of the series’ featured stars and the team captain, twisted his knee at the first event in Kansas City—another setback in a long series of injuries. 

“Eli’s problem is being healthy, and he rides hurt a lot,” said Davis, who coaches the Carolina Cowboys. “When he’s healthy, he can ride with anyone.” 

Injuries carried over to the second season in 2023, and the Freedom traded Vastbinder to the Ariat Texas Rattlers in September in exchange for 22-year-old Dawson Gleaves. “We are excited to have the youth and fire Dawson brings to bull riding,” said Freedom head coach Cord McCoy at the time.

A month later, Vastbinder faced his old team in the playoffs. He successfully rode Lone Star, earning 86.25 points and sending the Oklahoma Freedom out of the tournament. The Rattlers ended up winning the PBR Team Series Championship over the Austin Gamblers, but it was his ride against the Freedom that stood out to Vastbinder. 

“It feels good,” he said. “Anytime you get a win, it feels good. But to beat a team that kind of, so to say, gave up on you, it definitely feels good to go in there and send them home.”

Vastbinder had little time to enjoy his $53,500 share of the team’s title bonus. Less than a month later, on November 10, the individual season kicked off in Tucson, Arizona, which runs through May. 

On that first night, Vastbinder failed to last eight seconds in any of his attempts. But it was just the beginning of another long, exciting, and unforgiving season.

Paul Wachter has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, ESPN, and The Atlantic. He lives in Chapel Hill.