37 year-old Ken Apps is all cowboy. In his twenty-first year of the rodeo life, Ken's currently competing as a semi-pro bareback rider in the Calgary-based Foothills Cowboys Association. Looking at least ten years younger than the age on his birth certificate, he talks about the rodeo life with an enthusiasm untouched by age or injuries. "A rodeo person's life is (he) does it because (he) loves it. Some can make a living off it and it's usually a short career because of injuries and sometimes life ending."
Injuries are truly the bane of rodeo cowboys who routinely compete injured. In 1995 at a rodeo in Armstrong, British Columbia, Canadian saddle bronc great, Duane Daines, broke his back at 36 years of age. Former Canadian bull riding champion, Wade Joyal, entered the 1997 NFR with a broken leg. Just a week ago, Nanton bull rider, Glen Keeley, died after being trampled by a bull at a PBR event in New Mexico. "Most people think I'm nuts," Ken says "My in-laws think I'm nuts (and) can't believe I'm still riding. My mom won't even acknowledge the fact that I have ridden let alone that I'm still doing it."
To the neophyte spectator sitting ten rows back in the stands, rodeo's bareback event may look like a brief flurry of cowboy and horse bucking around the arena until a horn sounds. To the veteran, it's one of the most difficult of the roughstock events, requiring a cowboy to ride and spur a bucking horse with one hand gripping a sheepskin lined handhold. Judges assign points, similar to sports like figure skating or gymnastics, where the horse's power and cowboy's style determine the victor, most of the time. "If you have a slow horse," Ken says, "You have to ham it up a bit, make it look like a better ride than what it actually is. Sometimes you just have to hang on for dear life and hope that the judge doesn't think that you're just hanging on!"
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