No one had higher expectations of Douglas Duncan in 2011 than he had of himself.
And despite struggling for the first part of the season, the 24-year-old from Alvin, Texas, said, "I think I finally found Douglas Duncan again, and it feels a hell of a lot better than it did.
"I don't want to say it was a lot of hype, but everybody expects big things out of me, and I just wasn't doing it. Everybody had a lot of their own opinions … and you can take a lot of that, and I think I let some stuff get to me. I was trying to change some stuff - just showing up and trying to change it, instead of going back to what got me there."
What got him to the Built Ford Tough Series was an abundance of talent, and the kind of bravado worthy of the old-school bull riders he looked up to as kid.
This season, however, he endured ongoing issues with his hip - though he won't use that as an excuse - and went from focusing on winning every round to thinking about riding four bulls over the course of two-day events.
'When you're showing up to the Built Ford Tough Series and you're getting on those rank bulls, the zeroes can start adding up on you in a hurry, and it just feels like quicksand.'
For the better part of three months, he was ranked dangerously close to the cutline. Twice, he nearly got sent back to the Touring Pro Division.
"When you're showing up to the Built Ford Tough Series and you're getting on those rank bulls, the zeroes can start adding up on you in a hurry, and it just feels like quicksand," he recalled. "A couple times I had to ride my bull not to get cut, and I think I ride too good and worked too hard to even be around there."
He's not there anymore.
Two Top 5 finishes down the stretch - in Hartford, Conn., and Milwaukee - pushed him from the cutline to spitting distance of the Top 10.
He finished the season ranked 16th in the world standings. That would have been higher without seven buckoffs at over 7 seconds. Most of those came during a stretch of five events in which he went 0-for-the-weekend.
He was blanked nine times in the first 13 events of the season, but only twice in the 16 events that followed. During that stretch, he had a streak of 12 events in a row in which he covered at least one bull.
Duncan (left) and Stormy Wing think they can ride them all.
"My confidence never really left," said Duncan, when asked to compare the two vastly different portions of his 2011 season. "It's just stuff never did really work out."
The only difference that he knows of is that his hip finally felt well enough for him to go back to getting on bulls every day. He has 15 at his ranch.
In 2012, he's looking "to capitalize on every opportunity."
"I can't tell you how many 7-second bull rides I had this year, and if you can ride them 7 seconds, you dang sure can ride them 8. Just showing up at every event and trying to take a win home at every event, every round, every bull I get on. I'm excited for next year, and I expect a lot better things from me. I didn't have a bad year, by no means, but I didn't have the year that I'm capable of having."
He covered 28 of 88 bulls on the season. Had he made the whistle on the seven bulls he rode past the 7-second mark, he'd have improved his 31.82-percent riding average by nearly eight points. Four other buckoffs took place between 6.7 and 6.9 seconds.
His average this year was still up from his career average of 29.6 percent.
"When you tie yourself down on one, you gotta mean it," he said.
'If you're already thinking you can't ride 'em all, then you already beat yourself.'
Duncan knows that at 24, he still has a career worth of accomplishments ahead of him. Still, he's no longer a newcomer and needs to settle into his role.
More importantly, he needs to compete up to his potential in spite of whatever expectations come his way.
"I've thought about a gold buckle since I could walk, and that never left me," Duncan said. "I like winning first, and lot of times I do pick over my head a lot, but I dang sure ain't scared of those rank ones. To me, when you're getting on Bushwacker, I'm a Gangster, in a crowd like this, in a building like this, that's all that I've dreamed of doing - just the feeling of the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded.
"I know I have the ability to crack 'em."
"I dang sure know I belong," he continued. "We have a saying, between Stormy (Wing) and all of us, we all want to be a World Champion, and there's this saying that you can't ride 'em all, and we think that's the dumbest thing possible. If you're already thinking you can't ride 'em all, then you already beat yourself. We have the same attitude, and we do a good job of picking each other up.
"I'm dang sure looking forward to next year."
NOTES
Ross Coleman, J.W. Hart, and Cord McCoy will participate in a Celebrity Cutting Horse Event to benefit the Careity Foundation on Friday, Dec. 2, in Fort Worth, Texas, as part of the National Cutting Horse Association Futurity. The three will be joined by reigning Iron Cowboy Colby Yates Saturday from 1-3 p.m. for an autograph signing at the Best of the West Shopping Experience in the Amon G. Carter exhibit Hall at the Will Rogers Memorial Complex.