Right up through the third round, I was liking this weekend of bull riding. It just had a good feel to it. There were some nice rides and a lot of really good bulls. There was even a near-poetic save by Wendel Runyan of Josh Faircloth from the wild & brockle-faced Whiskey's Rebel. I was happy. After three weeks of decent but ho-hum bull ridings, this was a really good one.
Then it turned out to be one of those games in which everything happens in the last quarter.
- Guilherme Marchi makes a last minute surge with a 90.50 ride on Back Bender to lead Shane Proctor by 2 points with two rides left.
- Reese Cates rides like he's stuck to the bull and makes his fourth ride of the weekend, edging out Marchi.
- Shane Proctor shakes off his Built Ford Tough slump, rides his fourth bull of the weekend, and wins the event over Cates by 1.75 points.
- Silvano Alves walks away from a bad wreck with a trashed vest and hoof-shaped bruises all over his chest.
- Asteroid knocks the socks off Josh Faircloth and just about everyone else with a massive out, winning high bull score over Bushwacker for the second time in a row.
- And I'm a Gangster goes down and gets up three times in his effort to get Fabiano Vieira off his back. Then he goes down again.
All of this in the last ten rides of the weekend, a period of maybe 30 minutes, when everything about bull riding, the good, the sad, and the scary, played out in the arena and kind of took your breath away.
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Read more about San Antonio bull scores and pedigrees in Bulls and Bloodlines. And check out San Antonio by the Numbers to see what the facts and figures say.
