Every January, Madison Square Garden is filled with dirt. The hardwood and ice disappear. Steel chutes arrive. For three nights, cowboys head to the Garden to risk their lives on the back of the best bucking bulls in the world.
I arrive early and am greeted by the smell of manure as I make my way toward the press suite. Crew members in cowboy hats move across the space, adjusting gates and testing lights. The arena taking its new form. The day begins with the Running of the Bulls, late in their arrival after being momentarily folded into the Midtown gridlock alongside morning commuters and tourists alike. Each bull is guided up a winding five-flight ramp into the building.
The top forty bull riders in the world are each competing for the weekend’s grand prize: forty thousand dollars and a sterling silver belt buckle. The rules are simple. A rider must remain mounted for eight seconds to earn a score. The relationship between rider and bull is not purely adversarial. There’s the careful touch of a rider’s hand against the bull’s back. The pause before the gate opens. The way the arena seems to inhale when man and animal meet. Despite the intensity of the spectacle, the crowd remains buoyant, there to experience the match of cowboy and beast, and to have a few cold beers while they are at it. The best rides require a strange, fleeting collaboration between rider and bull.
Over the course of the three day rodeo, the energy remains electric, even in the quietest moments. Every time a rider climbs on it’s a risk. In less than a second, a life could be altered permanently. Yet there’s reverence in the riders for the bulls, the sport, and the livelihood. It’s more than a pastime, it’s a calling, it’s sacred.
