First Jody Newberry lost his good name. Then he nearly lost his life.
If not for his wife and two surgeons, Newberry never would have had the opportunity to reassert himself as one of the world’s finest bull riders. Last February, two years after being close to death, he won the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Invitational and left St. Louis $37,050 richer.
Performances like that used to be more the norm for the 29-year-old from Ada, Okla. In 2003, Newberry captured the World Finals event title, PBR Rookie of the Year honors and the Lane Frost/Brent Thurman award for his 94.5-point gem on three-time World Champion Bull Little Yellow Jacket. He won $344,107 for the season and placed seventh in the world.
Two years later, Newberry was leading the Finals event standings after five rounds and was in the running for the world title. But after making the whistle in Round 6, he was disqualified for leaving the chute with his left spur lodged in his rope. He said the lodging, known as “catching the knots,” was unintentional. (The practice is not uncommon during a ride because a cowboy’s feet are continually thrown backward as his upper body is thrust forward. But when a rider exits the chutes that way, he is deemed to have intentionally given himself an unfair advantage.)
Newberry, unable to focus, bucked off his remaining two bulls and finished third in the world. Wanting to clear his name, he designed a rope with a three-and-a-half-inch-wide flat leather strap that he contended was impossible to catch his spurs on. He was in the Top 5 for most of 2006, until he was called for the same infraction in Reno, Nev.
“After it happened the first time, I felt like I had something to prove,” he said. “After the second time I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I couldn’t tolerate somebody calling me a cheater, much less a liar.”
Newberry began going “through the motions” at events, wasn’t bothered by bucking off and slumped to an 11th-place finish. He later attended amateur contests where a $3,000 to $4,000 paycheck was considered good.
The mental and emotional toil Newberry endured was nothing compared to the near-fatal injury he suffered in Oklahoma City in February 2008. A torn left groin was compounded by tears to three branches of his femoral artery, the principal blood vessel supplying oxygen-rich blood to the leg. He went to a hospital that night.
“They ran some dye in my blood and did a CAT scan and realized I had bleeding in my leg, but they didn’t want to do anything about it,” Newberry said. “They told me it would seal itself off and just fix itself, basically. I was in that hospital in the most extreme amount of pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. I asked them for more pain medicine and they treated me like I was a drug addict with a bruise on my leg wanting narcotics.
“I was begging for more pain medicine, let me tell you.”
Finally, his wife Amanda called Dr. Tandy Freeman, the PBR’s director of sports medicine. After convincing Newberry’s doctor to release him, Dr. Freeman made an appointment for Newberry with a vascular surgeon, Dr. Gregory Pearl, at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas the next day.
Amanda drove her weakened husband – who had lost a massive amount of blood – to see Dr. Pearl. “Jody looked like a walking dead man,” Amanda wrote online.
Dr. Pearl prepped Newberry for emergency surgery soon after seeing him and repaired the damaged arteries in a roughly six-hour procedure.
“The doctor personally told me that if we had waited [a few more hours], Jody would’ve lost his leg and probably his life,” Amanda wrote.
Newberry healed for six months before he got on another bull. On his eighth one, he tore abdominal muscles and needed another operation. He was ready to call it quits before he watched the 2009 World Finals on TV: “I decided, ‘Man, I’m dumb for not being there.’” So he entered PBR Touring Pro events and eventually made enough money to be promoted to the Built Ford Tough Series in late January.
Newberry covered all four of his bulls in St. Louis and 14 of his first 22 overall (63.6 percent). Since that win, the Oklahoma cowboy has ridden 14 of 31 bulls for an average of 45.16 percent. He’s had four Top 10 finishes – including a fourth-place finish in Wichita, Kan. – and is now ranked 14th in the world.
“I really feel like I’ve just picked up where I left off,” he said.
[This story appeared in its original form in the February/March issue of Pro Bull Rider magazine. To subscribe and receive this kind of in-depth reporting every two months, visit TeamPBR.com today.]
News & Notes
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The best of 2010: PBR.TV is counting down the top rides of the year. This week, check out rides No. 21-30, including three 90-point efforts by Renato Nunes, and then vote for your favorite here.
— by Chris McManes
