PUEBLO, Colo. – In one of the most helpless moments of his career, a pale Jess Lockwood was sitting inside a Bismarck, North Dakota, hospital in late September two years ago as he received an IV of fluids.
Lockwood had come down with pneumonia following a cross-country road trip to North Dakota. He was forced to make the trip, with the help of Stetson Lawrence, after spending 30 hours in a Long Island hospital recovering from four broken ribs, a punctured lung and a lacerated kidney.
The Volborg, Montana, bull rider was in the midst of what would be a memorable 2017 World Championship run, a gold buckle performance that saw Lockwood overcome his serious injuries that he sustained attempting to ride Blue Magic in Uniondale, New York, in just three weeks.
Those injuries cost Lockwood two events that season after he had previously missed five events in the first half of the year because of a torn left groin sustained at Iron Cowboy.
In 2018, Lockwood’s bid at becoming the second rider to win back-to-back World Championships came to an abrupt halt when a torn right groin in Nashville, Tennessee, led to him missing the final six regular-season premier series events.
In fact, as astutely first noted by PBR’s lead CBS television play-by-play commentator Craig Hummer, Lockwood has missed 25 premier series events in the past three years when you factor in his broken left collarbone from earlier this season.
Those 25 events is essentially the equivalent of a full PBR season.
“There hasn’t been a year that I haven’t been hurt and not had to sit out,” Lockwood said. “Even in 2016, I didn’t miss any Built Ford Toughs (after he made his debut in Sioux Falls, South Dakota), but I missed the majority of the summer (because of a partially torn right MCL).
“I feel like I missed out a lot, for damn sure. I don’t worry about it too much. I just make sure I make the most of the ones I get to.”
Yet here we are, with the start of the stretch run to the 2019 PBR World Finals (Las Vegas Nov. 6-10) ramping up next week with Last Cowboy Standing at Cheyenne Frontier Days and Lockwood on the cusp of winning a second World Championship in three seasons.
Lockwood trails world leader Jose Vitor Leme by only 146.66 points following his victory at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Touring Pro Division event on Tuesday night. Lockwood went 4-for-4 in Wyoming, winning the event with 86.5 points on Southern Style.
The Volborg, Montana, bull rider leads the PBR with five wins this summer and a PBR record 687.5 world points earned during the UTB summer break.
Just like he did in 2017, Lockwood has found a way to overcome a significant injury in 2019 to remain in world title contention.
A broken left collarbone at the 2019 WinStar World Casino and Resort Global Cup USA, presented by Monster Energy, on Feb. 9 led to him missing nine Unleash The Beast events in the first half.
The injury knocked him out of the world No. 1 ranking, where he had held a commanding 967.5-point lead, and made him go from the hunted to the hunter.
Lockwood has been a complete madman since that broken collarbone – at times pushing himself to point of exhaustion going up and down the summer PBR trail.
He has made the most of his opportunities since he was finally cleared to ride again in the late spring.
The 21-year-old is 28-for-42 (66.66%) at all levels since returning to competition on May 3.
He has earned a PBR-high 1,372.5 points toward the world standings since then, including those 687.5 points since the summer Unleash The Beast break began on June 3. In comparison, Leme has earned 865 points in the same span – 700 of which came from his victory at the Ty Murray Invitational.
He is not done either. Lockwood is entered in the Days of ’47 Rodeo this Friday night and the Thief River Falls, Minnesota, TPD on Saturday night. Fans can watch the Days of ’47 Rodeo on RidePass beginning at 9:45 p.m. ET.
If you ask Lockwood, none of his previous injury-riddled seasons has been as challenging as this year.
Yes, that includes the gnarly wreck in Uniondale and later bout of pneumonia.
“Probably this collarbone,” Lockwood replied when asked. “The groin one was aggravating because I felt like I could walk and do anything and everything. The broken ribs and lung, I was back within three weeks.
“This collarbone, I couldn’t use my arm for three months. It is hard doing shit with one arm. It is just aggravating to know I couldn’t do simple tasks like feed hay bales to horses, mix grain up and carry grain buckets. I couldn’t help around the place. That was the most aggravating.”
There is no questioning that when Lockwood is healthy, he is one of the best in the sport.
“That is why you see him miss nine weeks with a collarbone and are like, ‘Come back! Get back! Hurry up and get your butt back!’” two-time World Champion Justin McBride said. “But then at the same time, when he does come back, he is not dealing with it anymore. He is right to where he left off.
“It is tough for me because I know how much he could win if he is here, but it is tough to argue with the way he goes about it. He is not a guy that is going to ride with a lot of injuries.”
The reality for Lockwood and all of the bull riders is that the threat of injury will always be there when they tie their hands into the bull rope.
It is part of the sport, and Lockwood is not worried about how his body may hold up during the final four months of the season.
“I don’t think it is anything at all,” Lockwood concluded. “It is life and it is bull riding. You are going to get hurt.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko