Guilherme Marchi is the only proven winner ranked in the Top 5.
Couple that with the fact that for the past five months, the 2008 World Champion said his wrist was no better than 65-percent, and the rest of the Top 40 may not like hearing that the 27-year-old Brazilian is finally healthy.
Two weeks into the summer break, Guilherme Marchi had his right wrist surgically repaired. The nagging injury had been bothering him since a chute mishap in late January at a Built Ford Tough Series event in Anaheim, Calif.
He missed three events, but in 17 events, he’s covered 65.4-percent of his bulls (a full 2-percent better than his career average) and has six Top 5 finishes. Although he hasn’t won an event since Duluth, Ga., he has posted three second-place finishes.
In spite of competing in three fewer events than both Renato Nunes and Austin Meier, Marchi is only 1,642 points off the lead – a difference that can be made up in two of the remaining 10 BFTS events.
In five previous seasons, Marchi has never finished worse than third in the world standings.
Riding percentage: 65.4 (2010), 63.5 (career); Influential ride from 2010: Albuquerque, Round 4, Black Pearl, 91.25 points; Most telling statistic of 2010: After a dismal performance at the 2009 World Finals, Marchi started off the 2010 season with a streak of seven consecutive rides, and then recorded four Top 5 finishes after injuring his wrist in Anaheim, Calif.
In the seventh 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:
Cody Lambert: “[The Top 3] have to focus on the bulls they’re getting on. They can’t worry about what Guilherme… is going to do. They can’t worry about it, but Marchi will be a distraction to those guys because he will ride most of his bulls… If he can ride 65-percent of his bulls at 65-percent, I expect him to ride them all when he’s well. That’s how good he is. That’s how good champions are. That’s how good Adriano (Moraes) was in his prime. That’s how good Troy Dunn was. That’s how good Michael Gaffney and Justin McBride were. You expect them to ride every single bull.”
Justin McBride: “If he’s only been 60-percent, he’s done pretty good, and I’m interested to see him at a 100-percent. At the end of the day, I’m a fan of bull riding and I like to watch guys make good rides. And Guilherme is a guy that is fun to watch because you know no matter what bull he gets on, he’s going to try his guts out and he has a good chance of riding him… When we do out Dickies matchups on the show, there are times I’ll pick the bull over the guy. I can never think of a time, no matter what bull Guilherme was matched up against, that I would take the bull over Guilherme.”
Justin McKee: “He has it all. He just has to still want it. ”
Ty Murray: “You can’t ever forget about him, and don’t let last year – he fell out of that race, but that was the toughest race between the Top 2 guys of all-time. He’s a threat, and he’s always a threat. He’s fourth and he’s at 60-percent.”
Chance of winning title in 2010:
Lambert: “It can’t hurt that he’s been in the lead, he’s been in second, he’s won the finals and he’s had a terrible finals. He’s been through the whole spectrum, but even at his worst, he’s No. 3. When Kody Lostroh and J.B. Mauney are putting on a show and doing amazing things and Guilherme’s at his worst, he’s barely behind them.”
McKee: “I think he wants to make the $1 million, but I don’t know if he can repeat. Not this year… In the back of his mind, he doesn’t know if that hand is going to hold together. He doesn’t know what the residual affect is going to be after all those shots. He’s wondering about the future. It could be his last year if that’s the case. He’s battling all those things and he didn’t have any of that when he won it. It has to be perfect. The guy wins—it has to be perfect.”
Murray: “He’s still the one that everybody is going to have to go through.”
McBride: “For Guilherme, don’t put it all on the finals. Go ahead now and separate yourself from them. Go in there with a lead. Don’t go in there trading every round back with them. Go in with a lead – and I think he’s quite capable of going in with a big lead, at this point, because he could easily go in with a 1,000-point lead at the finals. Then if he did buck off of one or two bulls, it wouldn’t cost him a World Championship. If I was Guilherme, coming back off this break healthy, I would approach it trying to break every record there is and trying to win each and every event that’s left. It has to feel good to be healthy – for him. I would think he’s probably pretty excited to get back to riding. If he goes at it like that, they’re going to have a hard time beating him for the World Championship.”
NEWS and NOTES
Top wrecks of 2010: Watch the top wrecks of 2010, then vote for the worst here.
— by Keith Ryan Cartwright
