With only a few days until the season-opening PBR Tamworth Iron Cowboy at Aelec Arena, some of the bravest unsung heroes of PBR are gearing up to put their bodies on the line for both the athletes and animals of the death-defying sport.
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Queenslanders Clint Kelly (Gracemere) and Cameron Parkinson (Ingham-based but originally from Murrurundi), as well as News South Welshman Mitch Russell (Melville), will once again join forces to form the PBR Australia protection athlete team - a year-round post that sees the fearless trio provide protection-athlete services to all of PBR Australia's national tour events, including the Iron Cowboy event in Tamworth.
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Akin to cowboy bodyguards, the role of the protection athlete is a unique and sometimes overlooked one, beginning as soon as the bull rider's job ends. When a rider is bucked off their bull, the protection athlete springs into action, defending the fallen rider by any means necessary.
In order of priority, they work to protect the rider first, the bull second, and themselves and each other third.
The potentially lifesaving role of the protection athlete can entail distracting the bull and making themselves a target or laying across the rider to take the impact of the bull's horns or hooves. They will also often tag-team with their fellow protection athletes to separate the bull and rider in a swift and safe way.
Russell, who has a four-year-old son, said: "For the blokes riding the bulls, they've got minimal control over their situations - they're being flung around and trying to stay atop a bucking animal that weighs around 800 kilos. There's a huge imbalance in that matchup. So when they're bucked off, they often hit the ground pretty hard.
"That's where we come in as protection athletes - we are there to protect the rider at all costs. We need to make ourselves the target to take the target off the rider's back, and there's pretty much nothing we won't do to get the job done. We keep shifting the target between the protection athletes until the bull gets calm."
Russell is also one of Australia's top bull breeders and heads up TnR Bucking Bulls, which last week took out the 2019 PBRA Stock Contractor of the Year title for the second year running.
The risks for Russell and his teammates are multiplied when you consider that a protection athlete can come between bull and cowboy up to 60 times in one night of competition.
Indeed, Russell, Hall and Ingham have sustained their fair share of breaks and bruises. The trio's collective injury tally includes more than 10 broken bones, knocked out teeth, multiple knee reconstructions, a horn to the neck, ruptured ACLs and concussions - to name just a few.
"I don't think I've had a heap of injuries, though, compared to some of the guys," Russell said. "I've had three knee reconstructions and a few broken forearms, fingers and ribs - as well as a shattered cheek bone.
"The scariest injury I've ever had is when I got hit in the throat while one of the bulls was bucking. My throat swelled right up and felt like it was closing, and made it really hard to breathe. They were about to stick a knife in my neck so I could breathe, but I ended up coming good so they took the knife out of the equation - which was obviously good."
The PBR Australia Protection Athlete Team will arrive in Tamworth this Saturday when the PBR Iron Cowboy event bucks into AELEC Arena. The event kicks off the 2020 PBR Australia season and represents the first opportunity to accumulate critical rankings points for the 2020 Australian title race and the 2020 PBR World Standings.
