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DALY CITY — Trigg McClellan’s next patient is just moments away, arriving in a heap of dust and dirt, adrenaline and pain.
An orthopedic trauma surgeon in San Francisco and San Jose, he usually treats the casualties of urban life: shootings and car rollovers, falls and motorcycle wrecks, attempted suicides.
But his passion is helping riders at rodeos, fixing the young men who straddle angry bulls and broncs, rocket in the air and then land with a thud.
“They’re athletes,” says McClellan, a Nashville native who grew up on horseback and volunteered with the Justin Sports Medical Team at this year’s Grand National Rodeo at the Cow Palace. “It’s not a matter of if they’re going to hurt — but when, and how bad. I want to help them to be able to do their job, and do as well as they can.”
He leans against the arena fence, watching and waiting, his trained eyes squinting below the low brim of a cowboy hat. If there’s an injury, he wants to witness it.
Then the gate swings open and a one-ton bull thunders out, a raging barrel of beef – free and riderless. That means bad news for the cowboy left back in the chute.
McClellan rushes to the Rodeo’s medical room, where he meets Wyoming rider Clayton Savage, 32, barely able to stand, carried in by a friend.
Part of a proud tribe of itinerant young men who circle the West in search of eight-second rides and quick payouts, Savage moans as the doctor pulls off his boot and rolls up his jeans.
His leg, fractured in July, is held together with a rod and screws.
But it healed nicely and felt fine – until just now, when his bull Gin and Sin bucked in the chute and hit Savage in the face, then bucked again and smashed him against a fence.
“Does that hurt?” asks McClellan, prodding a spot on Savage’s tibial plateau, just below the knee, critical to leg alignment and stability.
“Yes, sir,” said Savage, throwing back his head with a low roar of pain.
“Where are you staying?” the doctor asks, recommending X-rays. “Some motel,” Savage answers.
Bull riding — dubbed “the most dangerous 8 seconds in sport” — has long been revered for its challenge, and its risk.
Every ride is different. Some bulls lunge, legs stretched. Others leap, popping high in the air. Those who know say the toughest rides are the “spinners,” bulls who drop a shoulder and pivot.
The cowboy clings tight and often is tossed off, like a rag doll. Yet even in the dirt, there’s peril. The bull might trample the downed rider, or use its horns to gouge and toss him.
The more thrilling the ride, the happier the crowd.
If cowboys hang on for eight seconds, that one ride might pay $1,000 to $4,000, even more. Anything less and they’re disqualified, earning nothing but aches and pain. Unlike team sports, they’re not paid to sit on the bench.
Bulls are selectively bred for bucking prowess, and today are so fierce that the odds are stacked against the cowboys before they even straddle the 2,000-pound beast. A diminishing number of riders stay on long enough to score. The horses, called broncs, are also getting better, and bolder.
Deaths are rare, but happen. Earlier this year, Missouri bull rider Mason Lowe, 25, was killed after a bull stomped on his chest, causing massive heart, heart valve and aorta damage, even though he was wearing a protective vest. Last year, Colorado’s Jason Blasdel died after landing, when a bull turned and tossed him into the fence.
Much more common are injuries. This year’s list is long and grievous, dominated by concussions, with the occasional dislocated shoulder, ruptured kidney, wrist fracture, broken collarbone and ligament tears.
Last year, McClellan fixed a face laceration on Clayton Biglow, ranked first in the world in bareback riding with PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) career earnings of $619,130 — at only age 24.
He also taped up Dalton Shepard, 19, from Southern California, who arrived at the Grand National already banged up: a broken left hand from a car crash. Then while riding, his right hand got caught on a rope and fractured.
“So I came with one broken hand and left with two,” Shepard quips. “But now they feel brand new.”
Riders lead vagabond and hardscrabble lives, driving tens of thousands of miles to compete in 40 or 50 events a year across the West.
Many have chronic nagging injuries through the season and must prep before every ride, said McClellan. Rodeo medics borrow the shin splits and knee guards from other sports, adapting them for rodeo.
“A lot of these riders will spend an hour taping their own elbow for an eight-second ride,” says McClellan. “They’ve had at least one concussion, if not multiple. They might go through the whole season with something that hurts. They keep going.
“You will not find an athlete with more mental and physical toughness,” he says. “Contrast that with the typical weekend warrior that plays tennis and complains of some shoulder pain after two sets.”
Professional bull riding has surged in popularity since the early 1990s, fueled by the popularity of televised events and escalating prize money.
It is rhythm and courage, technique and balance. But it’s also adrenaline. No feeling comes close, riders say, to nodding your head and waiting for the gate to spring open.
For McClellan, it’s a sepia-toned world from the rugged America of our past, full of guts and glory far from his high-tech day job.
The 65-year-old physician, clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at UC-San Francisco, lives in Woodside and splits his time between San Francisco General Hospital and San Jose’s Regional Medical Center. His specialties are trauma and spinal injuries, directing SFGH’s Spine Service. He saved one victim of this summer’s Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting.
On weekends, he’s up at his ranch in Clements, east of Lodi, competing in the discipline of reining, executing equestrian patterns of tight circles, spins and sliding stops.
Rodeo work is a volunteer gig. He’s team physician for the Justin Sports Medical Team, which provides medical support services and a financial “crisis fund” to professional rodeo athletes at events nationwide, including the PRCA and Professional Bull Riders, Inc. The team’s mantra: “If you’re gonna rodeo, you’re gonna get hurt.”
“We can’t provide that high-quality quick care if we didn’t have these physicians, like Trigg, that understand rodeo sports medicine,” says Rick Foster, program director for Justin Sports Medical Team. “Rodeo is more of a collision sport than it is a contact sport.”
Back near the Grand National’s medical room, cowboys fidget and stretch. Rodeo organizers make bull riding the last event — after “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a parade of pretty palominos, clown stunts, roping and barrel racing — to hold the crowds.
Cameron Messier, 22, tapes up his wrist before climbing aboard a small chestnut saddle bronc named Yeti.
“The doctors are really a blessing, honestly,” says Messier, a Sacramento Valley native who rode last year with a torn knee meniscus. “We have to compete to get paid.”
“I’ve had knee injuries and shoulder injuries and there’s been times towards the end of the year when I’m banged up and hurt and I really need to keep going,” he says. “They tape me up and take care of me so I can feel my best. When I’m done, they put me on ice.”
The riders and doctor swap jokes, laughing. “If a cowboy doesn’t have a girlfriend, he’s homeless,” said Dalton.
“If a cowboy doesn’t have pain,” adds McClellan, “he’s lonesome.”Then the announcer calls, and it’s time to ride.
