Luke Snyder readily admits he can’t cook.

Yet, last November, he filmed an episode of the “Food Network Challenge.”

As luck would have it, he didn’t have to cook.

Instead, he was there to judge the Extreme Wild West Chocolate episode, which again proved to be a bit of a lucky draw for the 11-year veteran of the PBR.

His role was overseeing the authenticity of the western-themed presentations.

“That’s another funny thing,” he admitted afterward. “I’ve been hit in the face so many times, and broken my nose and had it reconstructed, that I only taste like 40 percent, and I only smell about 30 percent.

“I failed to tell them that, and luckily I didn’t have to taste anything.”

He follows that statement with a laugh, pushes his black cowboy hat up off his forehead and simply smiles.

Luke Snyder’s smiling a lot lately.

By the time the show aired in late May, the 28-year-old had worked hard to string together a series of what observers and outsiders might call lucky breaks, but the truth of the matter is that amid the twilight of his career, Snyder is working harder and is more dedicated to the sport of professional bull riding than at any other point in his career.

THE BASIC SKILLS

He grew up in Raymore, Missouri.

It’s not the first place anyone would imagine one of the top-ranked bull riders in the world would have grown up. Snyder was nine years old when his parents drove him 30 miles north to a rodeo school in Kansas City.

“I just knew I wanted to ride something that bucked,” he said, so his parents tried signing him up for the bareback clinic. It was full, but they said there was one spot still left in the steer riding class.

In three days time, he got on 10 steers and never made it past the gate.

“I was muddy, tired and sore,” he recalled, “but craving some more, so my parents bought me a youth rodeo card.”

After that, he went to a local practice pen for ropers and afterward, they would let him get on “some little running steers.” Eventually, he developed the basics skills. He then moved on to some steers that would buck a little more, and by the time he entered his first youth rodeo, he won the event.

“It was the first time I stayed on anything,” Snyder said. “I remember he was a big white steer named Casper and he just hopped up in the air.”

Judges marked him 75 points and the organizers gave him a check for $300.

“I never thought I’d see another poor day,” joked Snyder.

But it’s exactly why he never competed in high school rodeos.

He got his card with the North American Bull Riders Association, a regional organization for amateurs, and his parents went from driving him throughout Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas to as far away as Texas, Illinois and Iowa.

Not only could he earn money, but the competition – Mike Lee, Jordan Hupp and Dusty LaBeth, among others – prepared him for his transition to the PBR.

Now, more than a decade later, Snyder sees a possible role for himself – a few years from now – helping guide young riders as they transition from the amateur ranks to the professional level.

“It’s like a kid on his first day of school,” said Snyder, who has too much love for the sport, especially the PBR, to ever just completely step away. “If you don’t show them around, they’re just lost. I was the same way.”

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT FOR GRANTED

Snyder’s arrival in the PBR was, by all accounts, spectacular.

He finished the 2001 season ranked seventh in the world, he had four Top 5 finishes, and more importantly, the PBR Rookie of the Year won the World Finals average.

Riding all five bulls at the Finals, including a 93.5-point effort on Clayton’s Pet, only enhanced expectations.

The $348,561 he won that year accounts for about a quarter of his career earnings.

“I’ve had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows of maybe anybody,” said Snyder, who also admitted he thinks about what could have been.

“I was just a young kid who took it for granted,” Snyder said. “There’s a bunch of bright lights and you just get settled in having a big time partying. This is the most dangerous sport in the world (and) you can’t take it for granted.”

From 2002 through 2010, he never finished higher than 16th in the world standings. In 2005, he finished 40th – disappointing for a guy whose talent should make him a yearly contender. Not to mention, he rode in a record-setting 275 consecutive Built Ford Tough Series events during that time.

Since his rookie year, he has only recorded four Top 5 finishes once, in 2009.

“It’s easy to get complacent, especially as long as I’ve been around it,” Snyder said. “I jumped out there the first year and knocked off two of the biggest accomplishments I wanted to do out of the three.”

Winning, and some would say even contending for, a world title has eluded him.

He obviously knows he’s not getting younger and cannot turn back the hands of time, but the goal of winning the elusive gold buckle is still there.

“Even though I’m one of the older guys and I’m a veteran, I’m only 28,” he said, “and I still have some fighting years left in me.”

Having spent his career traveling with older riders – Brendon Clark, 30, Ross Coleman, 32, and Justin McBride, 31 – it’s easy for others to lose sight of the fact that Snyder is in the prime of his career.

Seven of the 17 previous World Champions have been 28 or older at season’s end.

Perhaps, that’s one reason Snyder is smiling about his recent ascent to 12th in the world standings.

“Now, I’m having a blast and enjoying it,” he said. “When you’re not having fun at this sport, you don’t want to get on the plane to go to them, and the airports suck. Now, this year, I’m hopping out of bed to head to the airport, and I can’t get to the airport fast (enough).”

A FRESH APPROACH

In recent years – and even earlier this season – Snyder has had to concern himself with battling to keep from being cut from the tour.

“I obviously think the same thing coming into every year,” Snyder said, “but thinking it and taking action are two different things.

“I said in (another) interview that I did something today, and have been doing lately and all this year – something that I haven’t been doing in the past – and it’s putting back into it the same thing I’m taking out of it.”

On that particular day, instead of sleeping in until noon, ordering room service and renting a movie, as he’s been known to do, Snyder went to the gym to work out and then he ran three miles.

Naturally, he feels better.

Not only is he in the best physical shape of his career, but the mental preparation makes him feel as though he can show up to any given BFTS event and compete just as easily with 18- and 19-year-old up-and-comers as he can with world-title contenders.

“I know my ability is there,” Snyder said. “You can’t get lazy at this sport. This is the one sport in America – or anywhere – that if you take it for granted, you’ll get your (butt) handed to you.”

This year has been different.

He actually listened to his best friend Clark talk about the benefits of working out.

Being in peak physical condition is what allowed Clark to survive a near-death wreck, return to the sport, win four consecutive Touring Pro events last summer, a BFTS event in the fall, and an event in his Australian hometown last weekend.

Snyder also said his girlfriend, Jennifer Manna, has had a profound impact on his approach to bull riding.

When she relocated from Springfield, Mo., to Los Angeles, Snyder said he didn’t know what to think about it, but once he got past being in a new place with “different people,” he said the new surroundings bred a desire to be healthy.

They spend much of their time outside hiking through Griffith Park, or at the beach surfing.

When he’s not at a bull riding event, he spends 80-to-90 percent of his time out in L.A., and in addition to lifting weights and jogging as part of his workout routine, he’s added yoga and Pilates to the mix. He’s leaner – he weighs the same as he did his rookie season – and far-more flexible than he was even a year ago.

“I attribute a lot of it to her,” Snyder said of Manna, who he claims to have met “when I wasn’t doing too hot.”

Since Ronnie Harvey event in Las Vegas, he’s had two other Top 5 finishes, and has recorded six Top 10 finishes in 17 events this year.

He’s gone from nearly being cut twice from the BFTS to being 420.5 points outside of being ranked in the Top 10 for the first time in years.

“That win in Vegas meant more to me than winning the Finals as a rookie – just because of where I’m at right now in my career,” Snyder said. “I know exactly what it means, and I know exactly what I went through to get to that point.

“At 18, you jump into the PBR and you think you own the world. I went to so many events. I don’t know. It just felt good to get to that point.”

MORE GOOD YEARS

He estimates he has three or four more “good years” beyond 2011 and added, “I’d like to put my stamp on the sport and go out on a high note. We all do.”

For once, he’s as happy in the arena as he is outside of the arena.

It’s not uncommon for a rider like Snyder to reach the second half of his career to fully understand and appreciate the eras before him. He’s thankful to have competed when he did, and said he only sees the sport growing from where it is today.

His hope is that when they day comes that he considers himself an “old timer,” winning $1 million is an everyday thing.

“This sport gave me everything in my whole life,” he said. “It means the world to me. Outside of family and friends, this is No. 1. I met my girlfriend through this. I’ve been able to buy everything I have. It’s going to buy me a ranch.

“It means the world to me. The PBR and all the guys – Cody Lambert, Ty Murray and all the guys on the Board (of Directors), the guys who put it together – they don’t get enough credit. Like everybody out here, we have them to thank for it.”

NEWS & NOTES

Snyder is currently competing in Australia. He will compete next weekend in Sydney at the PBR Australian National Finals before returning to the U.S. in time to resume the BFTS in Thackerville, Okla., on July 29 and 30 at The WinStar World Casino Invitational.

— by Keith Ryan Cartwright