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The Helmet’s On

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Times Staff Writer

Earlier this year in Anaheim, Mike Lee gingerly lowered himself onto a four-legged instrument of the pain, locked his hand on a rope around the one-ton beast, then withstood eight seconds of hell.

When Lee finally dismounted from the snorting, high-kicking bull named Sheep Dip -- on his terms, not the bull’s -- he was not wearing a cowboy hat as he soaked in the applause he’d generated by winning the Professional Bull Riders event. Instead, he wore a modified hockey helmet with a face mask made of 3/16ths-inch titanium.

When it comes to the test of ultimate cowboy manhood, bull riding, an icon of the American West looks a lot different than it did in your granddaddy’s day.

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“I’m not going to deny that a picture looks better when a cowboy has a cowboy hat on,” said Wiley Petersen, who has won four times this season and ranks eighth in the standings of the PBR’s premier Built Ford Tough Series. “[But] I’m not riding bulls to get cool pictures, I’m riding bulls to make a living.”

Helmeted riders such as Lee and Petersen may be in the minority, but plans are afoot to make the helmet more widely used, although Randy Bernard, PBR chief executive, says he will never take the cowboy hat out of the company’s bull-rider logo.

“Seventy percent of bull riders will tell you they’re not putting a helmet on because ‘Cowboys don’t wear helmets,’ ” Bernard said. “Those that do, they say it’s the smartest thing they ever did.”

Still, the PBR-backed development of a bull-riding helmet, to replace the modified hockey helmet, was begun about 20 months ago, and Bernard hopes to roll out the prototype by March. He had hoped to unveil it at the PBR World Finals, which begin Friday in Las Vegas and extend through Nov. 5.

He also is encouraging junior, high school and college rodeo organizations to implement rules making helmets mandatory.

He adds, though, that mandatory helmets on the professional circuit are not right around the corner.

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“There are too many people who feel they can’t ride with them,” Bernard says.

Many riders, because of previous injuries, wear helmets by mandate of the PBR’s Dr. Tandy Freeman. If riders don’t ride, they don’t get paychecks. That’s why so many compete even if they’re banged up. Freeman says about 20% of competitors wear helmets on a given weekend, but less than 10% without having to be told.

Petersen is in that minority. He considers himself more a self-employed bull-riding specialist than cowboy. He figures the helmet will extend his career, that being a mangled traditionalist doesn’t make business sense.

So he and Lee leave their cowboy hats in the care of colleagues when they lower themselves onto Mossy Oak Mudslinger, Smokeless War Dance or Reindeer Dippin’ and take their livelihoods -- and their lives -- into their own hands.

One of every 15 rides results in an injury to the rider requiring medical care, Freeman said. Bumps, bruises and scrapes don’t count, and neither do aggravations of previous injuries.

It’s a tough way to make a living and Petersen sees no shame in trying to keep his head intact.

Lee, the 2004 champion -- he’s third in the standings this year -- has had his head broken open twice from ear to ear, even though he was wearing a helmet, which dispersed enough energy for him to survive.

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Two years ago, he required brain surgery after a bull named Chili split open his skull.

“Used to be, it wasn’t the cowboy thing to do, maybe you were scared to wear a helmet,” said Lee, 23, who is in his fifth professional season. “It’s the smart thing to do. It’s not a dorky thing anymore.”

Not dorky, but ... The concern of critics is the helmet’s weight and how it affects the balance of the rider and increases his chances of wrecking. A Bull Tough helmet and face guard, the kind favored by most who wear helmets, weighs a little more than two pounds.

Justin McBride, the 2005 PBR champion, is a helmet holdout.

“No helmet for me,” he said. “I don’t wear a cowboy hat because I’m a bull rider, I wear a cowboy hat because I’m a cowboy. I started out with a cowboy hat, and I’ll finish my career with a cowboy hat.”

Older riders tend to agree. J.W. Hart, 31, said he would end his 12-year professional career if the helmet became mandatory.

It won’t, but research and development are underway for a helmet that will effectively disperse the impact of the head, horns and hoofs of a 2,000-pound bucking bull.

Bernard plans to offer scholarships and sponsorships to junior, high school and college associations that require helmets.

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If that works out, he should be able to count on many more helmeted riders within five years.

“I don’t want to implement a rule like we did with the [protective] vest, because it’s unfair for cowboys that don’t currently wear helmets,” Bernard said.

But if younger athletes grow up wearing the helmet, “by the time they get to PBR, the riders would feel naked without it,” Bernard added. “Any time you can save a life, it’s doing your sport a favor.”

Rookie Austin Meier, 19, reflects that way of thinking. He has worn a helmet since he was 13. He was stepped on two years ago and had both sides of his jaw broken, but it could have been worse.

“A boxer can only take so many blows to the head before it starts taking a toll,” he said. “I think that’s the same for a cowboy or bull rider -- you can only get whacked in the head so many times....

“It goes with protecting your investment. There’s so much money in the sport, if you can stay healthy enough to ride at the top level, it would be foolish not to do what you can to protect yourself.”

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Survival was the thinking when Cody Lambert developed a four-pound protective vest -- essentially a break-away flak jacket -- after the death of his close friend, champion Lane Frost, in 1989.

Lambert wore his vest in the 1993 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn. finals, where he took a hoof to the body that would normally have broken several ribs and punctured a lung. Instead, Lambert rose to his feet.

A year later, 14 of the 15 riders at the finals were wearing Lambert’s invention, and 27 of 30 riders wore it at the inaugural PBR finals in 1995.

Dr. Freeman said that in the 10 years since its invention, the PRCA has experienced “a tenfold decrease in the percentage of major injuries due to blunt chest and abdominal trauma.

“There was a dramatic decrease in guys with liver lacerations, ruptured spleens, bowel perforations, punctured lungs. Those were the main reasons we’d have to send someone from the arena to the hospital.

“After the vest became popular,” those major injuries “went from being a common reason” of hospitalizations “to not being a significant number,” Freeman added.

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Now, the primary reasons for an ambulance ride are head injuries and long-bone fractures.

PBR averages seven injuries, at least one of them a concussion, in the 105 rides during a typical weekend event. The most common surgical injury is facial fracture.

“The helmet saved my life twice, probably saved my nose, my teeth, cheekbones,” Lee said. “There are a lot of cowboys who have metal plates in their head, and teeth cost a lot of money.”

Even some old-timers, like retired champion Ty Murray, defend the helmet’s use.

“If someone thinks a helmet takes away from the sport, I don’t know what they’re watching,” said Murray, who is president of the PBR’s board of directors. “It’s one of the most dangerous sports in the world....

“Football went from leather helmets to face masks. Maybe people thought that took away from the game, but I can’t imagine it being played with leather helmets.

“Look at NASCAR, how many straps, pads and restraints they have. Bull riders, other than a vest and a helmet, there’s not a lot of protection out there.”

The vest, and the helmet, should make the sport safer than ever, but the PBR’s injury list flashes across the top of its website like a Times Square ticker: “Colby Yates, concussion with loss of consciousness questionable to compete.”

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Murray says safety standards are needed.

“If anything, the sport is getting more dangerous because the bulls are getting ranker and ranker,” he said. “Finding a caliber of bull that goes to the PBR is like finding a horse that can go to the Kentucky Derby. Those great bulls aren’t laying under every rock.”

Even so, the cowboy hat won’t go down without a fight.

“A lot of it is mental,” Hart said. “The helmets make sense. But I’m going to pull my hat down tight and go on.”

*

martin.henderson@latimes.com

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