Rodeos

It's 30 seconds before his big rodeo ride, and Julian Apodaca looks like he wants to disappear under the wide brim of his white cowboy hat. He's staring down at his boots, tugging at his lower lip, rubbing at his teary eyes. Julian's father, a former junior bull-riding champion, has a hand on each of his 5-year-old son's shoulders. "It's OK, hijo," Vince Apodaca says as somebody plucks the hat off the boy's head and replaces it with a helmet. "Cowboy up, OK?

It takes Big Bucks an average of 3.64 seconds to throw a cowboy off his back. And he keeps getting better. Last season, the 7-year-old, 1,350-pound bull shaved his time down to 3.48 seconds; this month, he trotted out of Madison Square Garden as the top-ranked bull in the 2008 Versus Invitational, the opening event in bull riding's major leagues.

Santa Maria, Calif. Ask Marv Hurley how many bones he's broken in rodeo and he'll rattle off a list that adds up to almost an entire skeleton: both ankles, both wrists, both feet, his collarbone, every one of his ribs. But out-of-control gas prices -- now that's a cowboy's nightmare. "They're killin' me," moaned Hurley, a 50-year-old bareback rider who manages to hang on to bucking broncs for a full eight seconds even with a partly metal pelvis that's held together by screws.

Rodeo parade spectators watched in horror Thursday as a 5-year-old girl was thrown off her mount and trampled by an out-of-control team of horses pulling a wagon. She later died. The girl, identified by police as Brielle Boisvert, was three years younger than the age minimum stated in the parade's online entry form. Authorities said they would determine whether criminal charges were warranted. Hundreds of people could see the tragedy along the two-mile route of the Tucson Rodeo Parade.

The electric bronco at Gilley's is gone along with the rubble at the recently razed New Frontier, but bull riders can still get their jolts here if they're willing to try the real thing. The Super Bowl of rodeo is coming to town Dec. 6 to 15, and with the lineup of bone-breaking competitions comes the handsome ranch hands in tall Stetsons, big buckles and pointy snakeskin boots to give Vegas a Marlboro man sheen for a few days.

It's a familiar scene at any rodeo: A bull bucks and spins, eventually flinging a cowboy into the air and onto the dirt. On television replays, it takes on a whole new dimension: Viewers see an animated bar chart that details the acceleration and deceleration of the animal. It ultimately stops on a number that represents the power of a particular bull.

IF BEN LONDO'S game were football, he'd be as famous as Reggie Bush, the former USC running back who won last year's Heisman Trophy as the country's best college football player. More famous, actually. Londo, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo senior, has won his rugged sport's equivalent of the Heisman for two years in a row, and is intent on winning it again this season. And all Reggie Bush had to worry about was the occasional 250-pound human being coming hard at him.

Rodeo is as popular in some parts of Mexico as baseball is in the United States, but there's one big difference. "The ball's not going to keep chasing you if it misses you the first time," said Hector Cruz of Moreno Valley, as he watched the bull riding during Sunday afternoon's charreria at Santa Ana Stadium. As the bucking bulls threw their riders, women in the crowd of about 8,000 screamed.

Ramiro Gurrola of Hawaiian Gardens is one of the best riders, or charros, in Mexican rodeo. But when the chute opened one blistering Sunday this summer, the bull he was riding inexplicably collapsed, like a boxer taking a dive. Midway through the regional Mexican rodeo championships in Sacramento, Gurrola was in fourth place, fighting a bad streak of charro luck. The belief in charro luck rules the world of Mexican rodeo, known as charreria.