Featuring a field that includes over 20 riders from the Professional Bull Riders elite Built Ford Tough Series, the Touring Pro Division makes its annual stop at the 114th edition of Cheyenne Frontier Days on Monday and Tuesday.
Entrants include two-time PBR World Champion Chris Shivers (Jonesville, La.), 2004 PBR World Champion Mike Lee (Decatur, Texas), who is ranked eighth in the BFTS standings and Top 10 BFTS riders J.B. Mauney (Mooresville, N.C.) and McKennon Wimberly (Cool, Texas).
Cheyenne Frontier Days is the largest outdoor rodeo and western celebration with almost 200,000 spectators watching over 1,500 contestants competing for more than $1 million, including one of the largest purses in the TPD.
Bull riding begins at 8 p.m. and tickets can be purchased at www.cfdrodeo.com or by telephone at (800) 226-6336.
The TPD is the minor-league tour of the PBR, where both established veterans and newcomers to the professional ranks compete against some of the most famous bucking bulls. The TPD gives riders the opportunity to compete in PBR-sanctioned events while earning money to qualify for the BFTS, which is comprised of the Top 40 bull riders in the world. Every five events on the BFTS, riders (based on points) who have slipped below the Top 30 are dropped from the BFTS and the Top 5 riders (based on money earned) from the TPD are allowed to move into the BFTS.
The BFTS travels to San Antonio for the United States Air Force Invitational at the AT&T Center on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets begin at $10 and can be purchased at www.Ticketmaster.com or by telephone at (800) 745-3000.
The BFTS is having the deepest title race in history, and there have been 15 different winners through the first 21 events. There are 12 riders in the Top 20 of the BFTS standings who have won an event. The multiple-event winners for 2010 are second-ranked Austin Meier (Kinta, Okla.) with four wins, top-ranked Renato Nunes (Buritama, Sao Paulo, Brazil) with three wins and fourth-ranked Valdiron de Oliveira (Aparecida de Goiania, Goiás, Brazil) with two wins.
The BFTS standings lead has changed nine times and there have been six different riders at the top this season. Mauney has been ranked first three different times, while Meier and Nunes have each held the top spot twice.
For more information on the Professional Bull Riders, please visit www.pbr.com or contact Jack Carnefix at (719) 242-2800 or jcarnefix@pbr.com or Sara Broun at (719) 242-2800 or sbroun@pbr.com.
About the Professional Bull Riders, Inc. (PBR)
More than 100 million viewers tune in each year to the PBR on VERSUS, NBC, CBS, FOX and on television networks around the world. With approximately 400 hours of primetime programming annually, the PBR ranks among the most prolific sports on air. The PBR attracts nearly 2 million live event attendees each year to its marquee Built Ford Tough Series and the PBR Touring Pro Division. More than 1,200 PBR bull riders compete every year in approximately 300 PBR-sanctioned competitions in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico. The PBR was nominated as 2010 Sports League of the Year at the Sports Business Journal Sports Business Awards alongside the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.
For more on the PBR, please visit www.pbr.com, www.teampbr.com, www.pbr.tv, www.myspace.com/teampbr, http://twitter.com/teampbr, or www.pbr.com/worldfinals.