PUEBLO, Colo. – This weekend at the Cowtown Christmas Championship Rodeo, bareback rider RC Landingham is riding for $1 million.
But looking back on the last decade of his life, it’s amazing that he’s still standing at all.
The Red Bluff, California, native started rodeoing when he was 4, ultimately deciding on bareback riding after a bull riding wreck in 2010 left him with broken ribs, a fractured back and shoulder, a lacerated liver and a collapsed lung.
After taking the time to recover from those injuries, Landingham was in a gruesome car wreck in May of 2011.
While driving on a windy road on the outskirts of Pendleton, Oregon, Landingham hit gravel, which pulled him off the road and caused him to hit a tree. The car was crushed, and Landingham shattered his left leg and broke two bones in his riding hand. The shattered glass from the accident also wreaked havoc on his musculature, requiring a large portion of his triceps muscle to be removed. Landingham wouldn’t awaken for two days after being transported to a Portland hospital, and he could not compete for nearly 18 months.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to compete again, especially at this level,” Landingham told Kendra Santos of the WCRA. “There was a lot of days where I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something else. I can’t keep turning myself up like this.’”
Then came perhaps the worst of it – Landingham’s mother, Wendy, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2013.
“Her and RC were very, very close,” Landingham’s wife Bliss said. “They had a very close relationship, and RC was her baby.”
Landingham finished the 2013 and 2014 seasons ranked No. 16 in the PRCA – the Top 15 qualify for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. But he rallied to qualify for the NFR in 2016, just in time for Wendy to enjoy the ride with him. She passed away in February 2017.
“Mom had as much fun as she possibly could,” Landingham said of the 2016 NFR. “She was taking a chemo pill so she could get through the NFR. She got to be there the 10th round – I won the 10th round on Top Flight, and that’s the last horse she ever got to watch me ride.
“It is harder to make yourself want to keep going for a while, and there’s parts of it that just aren’t there anymore.”
Landingham kept winning for his mom in the early goings of 2017, amassing $75,000 in prizes and reaching the No. 1 rank in the world bareback rider standings.
Then came the next blow – a horse fell on him in the arena, dislocating his left shoulder. He would ultimately need three shoulder surgeries after a screw and a chunk of bone broke off inside the joint.
Landingham was ranked 120th in the world in 2018, 33rd in 2019, and didn’t compete at all in 2020.
“When you have one shoulder surgery, and then two, it’s like, ‘Okay,’” he said. “Then you have to have a third – it’s hard to not question, ‘Is this going to work? Am I going to have to do something else?’”
He finally returned to riding in February of 2021.
Since then, it’s been a different story for the man who, for years, couldn’t catch a break. He and Bliss welcomed their son Wynn into the world on June 11, 2021, and he won the 2021 Pendleton Round-Up – right back where he suffered his car wreck a decade earlier.
Now he’s eligible for the WCRA’s Triple Crown of Rodeo. The Triple Crown is an annual bonus that pays a $1 million cash award to any one athlete or collection of athletes who win first place in any three consecutive WCRA Major rodeos.
After winning Rodeo Corpus Christi in Texas in May and the Days of ’47 Rodeo in Salt Lake City in July, Landingham is one win away from a life-changing check if he wins the Cowtown Christmas Championship Rodeo. Held in Fort Worth, Texas, the rodeo takes place on Dec. 14-17 and can be watched in its entirety on RidePass on Pluto TV.
“It’s the push from my family, and I guess the angels up above,” Landingham said.
As he competes for a check that would surpass all the rest of his career earnings combined, he’ll keep his mom’s favorite word – “try” – in his heart.
“There’s so many things I would say to her,” Landingham said. “I would just say that our dreams are finally coming true.”
Photo courtesy of WCRA
