Austin Meier is enjoying his best Austin Meier of five on the Built Ford Tough Series.

He’s won four events, compared to just one in four previous seasons. His 37 qualified rides are more than he earned in 2006, 2007, or 2008, and only seven shy of his total (44) for last year. His riding average of 59.7 percent is the highest of his career – 14 percent higher than his career average.

In nine of the first 20 events this year, he’s finished in the Top 10 in the average. His four wins are twice that of Renato Nunes and Valdiron de Oliveira.

And yet there is one statistic keeping the 23-year-old Oklahoman out of the No. 1 spot: At five events, he failed to make the whistle even once. He hasn’t qualified for seven short rounds, and at five of those events, he went 0-for-the-weekend.

Riding percentage: 59.7 (2010), 45.9 (career); Influential ride from 2010: Kansas City, Mo., Round 4, Carrillo Cartel, 91.5 points; Most telling statistic of 2010: Has won four BFTS events - twice as many as anyone else – and he’s still not the No. 1 rider in the world.

In the ninth of a 10-part series, a panel of experts – Cody Lambert, Ty Murray, Justin McBride and Justin McKee – weigh in on the current Top 10 riders in the world, and what it will take for any one of them to win the 2010 PBR World Championship.

What the experts are saying:

Justin McBride: “What stands out about Austin Meier is his grit and determination. Austin Meier is big, and right on the verge of being too big to ride bulls. He’s built a lot better to be like a steer wrestler, but he works really hard at it … his size and talent are both not really that good, but his work ethic, his grit and his determination make up for it.”

Ty Murray: “He is not a natural, athletic bull rider, but he is tough. He bears down every single time, he plays with the pain, he puts in the work, he has the dedication, and that’s paying dividends. If you could take Robson Palermo and give him some of Austin Meier’s attributes, he would be unstoppable. I’ll say it: Austin is not the most God-given talented guy in the Top 10. He’s not, but he’s tough as hell, he believes in himself, he works at it, he’s in optimum shape, he’s at optimum body type because he’s honed it that way, and he doesn’t make excuses, he has a good head on his shoulders, he tries and he shows up every day to work. He’s focused and ready to work. He’s your utility, workaday guy. If he was a football player, every team in the league wants to have a guy like him.”

Justin McKee: “He’s like Rocky Balboa. He likes getting punched as much as he likes punching. And goodness knows they’re going to get hit around. He likes the contact, and Austin loves riding bulls more than anybody in the Top 10. He knows he’s tough enough. He has no fear, and he knows they’re not going to hurt him. To me, he’s not trying to prove anything. He’s not in it for the gold buckle, the money or to prove he’s the best. He really loves to ride bulls.”

Cody Lambert: “Winning first place is great, but even more important than winning first place is riding all your bulls, and the guy who’s ahead of him has a higher riding percentage than him. You have to win, you have to place in rounds and you have to place in the average – you have to win along the way, and it isn’t set up for just who draws the easiest bulls – but our point system is one of those things like the PBR: It was the right time and the right place and we tried something and it worked. That’s how our point system is. ”

Chance of winning title in 2010:

Lambert: “I would enjoy it if we did see it. I just can’t come out and just pick one of those guys out of the top. I just can’t do it right now, because I don’t have a feeling like I did with Justin McBride, where I thought Justin McBride is going to run away with it because he’s better than everybody else. I don’t have that feeling. Renato’s great. Austin’s great, Travis Briscoe is great, and Guilherme Marchi is great and he’s so dangerous. … I think Austin has as good a chance as any of those four guys. … He’ll have to ride more bulls than Renato does, cause Renato’s going to ride a lot, and at least as many as Guilherme does. There are 10 players, but I think there are about four very serious players.”

McBride: “Yeah, he can win it, but it is going to be tough. It’s going to be tough for any of them to win it over Guilherme. … He’s going to have to get more consistent in the long round. You have to be able to back those event wins up with seconds and thirds and fourths throughout the course of a season. You can’t have an event win and then go 0-for-2 the next weekend. You can’t go from one extreme to the next. You don’t have to win every event, but you have to back those wins up with some places. … I don’t know. At the end of the day, when you have somebody like Guilherme, who’s got the same amount of grit and determination, but with a load of talent, it’s tough to beat him. All the stars are definitely going to have to line up for Austin to get his first world title.”

Murray: “He has a real chance. To me, what he needs to do is keep doing what he’s doing, because everything he has control of he’s doing right.”

McKee: “He needs to ride more rank bulls. He and McKennon Wimberly have similar stats on 45-plus bulls compared to Valdiron and Robson, Renato and Marchi and even Briscoe. If you look at the standings, from that standpoint, he’s down the list. I hate to say that about him, but that’s just a fact. The bulls he’s ridden for those [four] wins are not (well, maybe one of them was) 45-plus bulls.”

— by Keith Ryan Cartwright