With his midsection crushed and blood dripping from his mouth, Brendon Clark turned toward Dr. Tandy Freeman.
Struggling to catch his breath, the Australian said simply, “Help me. I’m going to die.”
Nearly two years later, there are not many details Clark can recall from that rainy night in April of 2009, beyond the “terrible feeling” of not being able to breathe. The few things he does recall have to do with the man he matter-of-factly refers to as his “overseas dad.”
“The guy saved my life,” Clark said of Freeman. “That’s the reality.”
It was the second round of an event in Omaha, Neb., and Clark had drawn Black Smoke as a re-ride option after Kiss Off had failed to perform earlier in the night. Kelly Erickson.
Later that night, doctors determined that Clark had suffered a lacerated liver, contusions of both lungs and numerous rib fractures.
The first of Clark’s three clear memories is when Freeman knelt down and assured him, “It’s going to be OK.” The second took place moments later in the Sports Medicine Room, as Freeman calmly placed an IV in one arm, and an EMT worker struggled to find a vein in the other.
“I remember Tandy going off and telling him to get the hell out of the way,” said Clark. “I remember that, and then two seconds later everything was OK.”
“That was not imagined on his part, because time was of the essence,” Freeman confirmed. “While I couldn’t say for sure what the severity of the injury was, I knew he had a serious injury, and along the spectrum of what it could have been, minutes could make a big difference.”
The last recollection Clark has took place outside of the Qwest Center, as they were lifting the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. With raindrops falling onto Clark’s face, Freeman leaned in and reminded him, “I’ll be there to see you as soon as I can.”
“Tandy always goes to follow up with the guys who get hurt,” said Clark.
A need to fill
Tandy Rice Freeman III was born in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 24, 1957.
After graduating from Junction High School, he attended Baylor University, where he majored in Biology, and eventually went on to earn his medical degree from the Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas – Dallas.
He went to the University of Utah for his internship and residency before winding up in Birmingham, Ala., where he completed a one-year fellowship program with the American Sports Medicine Institute. Upon returning to the Dallas area, he worked as an assistant team orthopedist with the Dallas Texans of the Arena Football League as well as the Dallas Freeze of the Central Hockey League.
Then he met Dr. J. Pat Evans, who would forever change the course of his career.
A decade earlier, Evans, who for worked 19 years as a team physician for the Dallas Cowboys, had befriended Walt Garrison, and through that friendship became acquainted with rodeo athletes. Evans quickly came to realize that the rodeo world was lacking a formal sports medicine program.
Garrison, who aside from having a career in the NFL is also an accomplished rodeo athlete, had introduced Evans to the likes of Donnie Gay, Ty Murray and other rodeo stars of the 80s. By the 90s, an aging Evans was thinking about retirement when he met Freeman.
“One of his primary concerns, in terms of going into retirement, was that he wanted to have somebody who would be willing to see, at least on a clinical basis in the office and that sort of thing, his old patients,” Freeman explained, “and he was thinking mostly about the old rodeo cowboys.”
“Tandy didn’t stumble into this deal,” Murray said. “J. Pat saw what he needed to see in him and brought him along.”
Freeman spent the better part of the first year or two observing Evans, taking notes and asking questions.
There was much to learn in the Sports Medicine Room as well as in the arena. Freeman, who also served as head team physician for the Dallas Mavericks from 1996 until 2001, got a better understanding of the injuries that are unique to bull riding.
He also gained insight from Evans about various treatments, and how the decision to choose one over another could affect an athlete’s career.
“I was lucky that I had somebody like J. Pat to learn from,” Freeman said.
Enter PBR
As Evans readied his protégé, the Top 20 professional bull riders were banning together to form the PBR.
Not only were they looking to form an organization that featured the best bull riders and the rankest bulls, but they also wanted to provide the best medical care available. They wanted the top physicians and the best trainers.
More specifically, the PBR co-founders wanted Dr. J. Pat Evans and Dr. Tandy Freeman.
“You’re talking about the most physically demanding and most dangerous sport in the world,” explained Murray, “and back when we were rodeoing, there would be some places we would go that there was nothing. Guys would carry tape around in their bag and figure out a way to tape up their own injuries.
“Cody (Lambert) jokes that early on in our career we’d enter the rodeos that paid the most, and towards the end of our career we’d enter the rodeos where there would be sports medicine available, because not all of them had it.”
Freeman has been associated with the PBR since its inception.
From the 11 events of its first year through all 30 events in 2010, as well as the World Cup and PBR World Finals, Freeman has worked with a team that includes Rich Blyn, Peter Wang, Tony Marek and others to develop a world-class program that is second to none in professional sports.
Clark said that some of today’s riders, particularly some of the younger ones who don’t make use of the staff, are spoiled by the luxury without even realizing it. Where once it was Gay, Murray and Lambert, it’s now veterans like Clark, Justin McBride, Luke Snyder and others who lean on Freeman for medical advice.
Murray entrusted him with surgeries to both knees and both shoulders. He’s taken care of McBride’s torn rotator cuff. When Snyder broke his neck last spring at an event in Canada, the first call he made was to Freeman to get his advice.
Freeman deflects much of his praise to his current training staff, and rarely reflects on the early years without mentioning Evans, Don Andrews and others.
“Everyone has made contributions for what we do with these guys,” said Freeman, who simply added that he’s “fortunate” to have been the one to see it through for the past 17 years.
Balancing act
“Tandy Freeman has watched a lot of bull riding,” Murray said. “He’s traveled as hard as guys that ride for a living.”
What separates Freeman from other doctors is his understanding of the sport.
He understands the mentality of a bull rider. He understands how a bull rider thinks, and because of that he understands how to impart the necessity of certain treatments.
“There are a lot of doctors who you could go to and say, ‘Hey, I have this injury. Should I ride a bull?” said Murray, laughing at his own answer. “And they’re going to say, ‘No.’”
Freeman was lighthearted when he said that riding bulls is “an occupational hazard,” but he was serious – as is most often the case – when he said that when it comes to caring for athletes, “you have to be judicious about things.”
For instance, two of the most common injuries occur in the wrist.
One involves the cartilage and ligament structure on the little finger side of the wrist, and the other occurs in the joint between the forearm and the wrist.
In both cases, surgery would be a common treatment. But it’s not a viable option for bull riders, because it could result in stiffness that would prevent them from turning the wrist palm-up – a position the rider needs to be comfortable with in order to put his hand into a bull rope.
“It’s hard to put my trust in anybody else other than him, because he knows the sport better than anybody,” said Wiley Petersen, who will travel from his home in Idaho to Texas this week to have his injured shoulder surgically repaired.
Not everyone listens. Or at least, not everyone listens the first time – but one by one they eventually come around.
Clark recalls the lesson he learned shortly after coming to the United States. He had pulled a groin muscle, and Freeman explained to him that he could go ahead and get on his next bull, but that afterward he’d complain that it hurts and he would end up going home for a month.
Clark got on his bull, and as Freeman predicted, he limped gingerly from the arena. As Clark made his way through the out gate, Freeman looked down from his usual spot at the end of the chutes, smiled and said, “I’ll see you in four weeks.”
“Sometimes they don’t always listen and we have to banter back and forth,” said Freeman, who added that in many ways it’s easier to deal with riders who have lumbered through past injuries, because they have a better understanding of their own limitations.
“In some ways it’s kind of like having teenage kids.”
In 2005, Clark tore his PCL and said that Freeman diagnosed the injury “to a T” during the evaluation in the Sports Medicine Room. An MRI, which Freeman requested, only proved “how smart he is with injuries.”
“We’re lucky,” said Clark, “we’re really, really lucky in the PBR that we have someone like him around. The beauty of having Dr. Tandy Freeman at an event is that he could potentially save your life at some point, and that’s what he’s here for.”
‘A small-town doctor’
Aside from traveling to Built Ford Tough Series events and various professional rodeos, Freeman still operates a private practice in the Dallas area, and is on staff at Mary Shiels Hospital.
Although he lives in a metropolitan area, the unique relationship he’s developed with his patients – most of whom must fly to Dallas for an office visit – Freeman likened himself to a “small-town doctor.”
For most bull riders, he is their only doctor.
“He’s someone who’s been my only doctor for the last seven years,” Clark said. “I don’t go to another follow-up doctor, because I don’t want their opinion. All I care about is Tandy’s opinion. He knows me and he knows the way I work and how the sport works, and what I’m physically capable of doing.”
It’s common for riders and other athletes to call and query Freeman on medical advice for other family members. It may not always be within his specialty, but he does his best to refer them to well-respected colleagues, the way Evans once referred Murray to Freeman.
“It’s not uncommon for somebody to fill out a form, and when it asks for the name of the primary physician, they’ll write my name on it,” he said. “A lot of these guys, they don’t go the doctor for anything else.
“I get to be a specialist and I get to be a family doc too.”
To that end, not much has changed since 1996. At the core are the lifelong relationships.
The only difference now is that instead of becoming buddies, there’s what Freeman calls, “a generational gap” between him and today’s newcomers.
“Now I’m like an uncle,” he joked, “an older uncle and a nephew.
“I have to say I’m admittedly proud of the fact that I’ve been associated with this organization for that long, and I hope it lasts for years and years more, until at some point I decide it’s time to put myself out to pasture.”
— by Keith Ryan Cartwright
