PUEBLO, Colo. – Koltin Hevalow was disappointed with his showing at the 2023 PBR World Finals this past May.

After riding Trippy for 84.75 points in Round 1, Hevalow went rideless through the remainder of the competition, bucking off Cool Whip in Round 7 to end his time in Fort Worth.

“That was a big opportunity for me to show everybody what I’m capable of,” Hevalow said. “But that made me realize that I belong here. I wanted nobody to get in the way of what I wanted.”

So he went home to Smithville, Missouri, and added some new decoration to his bedroom door.

A sign that says, ‘Get the gold.’

“I hung that up so every time I walk past that door or walk through it, I can read it, and it reminds me how bad that hurt and how much better it’ll be when I win it,” he said. “I remind myself of the gold buckle every day.”

While he has just three qualified rides thus far on the 2024 Unleash The Beast, he’s made them count. Hevalow went 3-for-4 at the PBR Johnstown earlier this month to finish fourth overall, the best premier series finish of his career.

He rode Sandman for 85.5 points in Round 2 and Tijuana Two-Step for 88 points in Round 3 before finishing his weekend with 89 points on Whiskey Trip in the championship round.

This all came after he bucked off Bottom’s Up in an agonizing 7.7 seconds in Round 1.

But rather than seeing that as a disappointment, Hevalow saw it as a positive.

“I didn’t necessarily look at it as a disappointment. Most people would, and it’d eat away at them,” Hevalow said. “I actually looked at it as a big opportunity and a big chance for me to use that to build my confidence because I’ve had a rough start. And getting a bull almost rode that nobody gets along with – that’s something that most people don’t like anyway, when they see one that nobody likes, but I was up to the challenge, and it made me see how good I really was. So it didn’t bother me or affect me in any way. It made me realize how great of a bull rider I am and showed that there are a lot of opportunities for me.”

Hevalow is coming off the 2023 PBR Teams season with the Kansas City Outlaws, going 7-for-20 (35%) as the Outlaws finished No. 2 in the regular season before finishing a disappointing sixth at the 2023 PBR Teams Championship.

In his second season with the Outlaws, Hevalow says he learned a lot from his new Brazilian teammates, including Cassio Dias, Leonardo Castro Ferreira, Julio Cesar Marques, Sandro Batista, and Wingson Henrique da Silva, as well as assistant coach Guilherme Marchi.

“Seeing them come from Brazil, and having trouble getting here on top of that, and learning from them and just the excitement they brought to the arena, to the locker room, definitely made bull riding that much more fun,” Hevalow said. “They got drafted from Brazil. There’s something there that they’re doing right, and there’s a reason why they want them here. So that made me open my eyes – there’s a reason why I’m on this team as well. But there’s an opportunity for me to be one of the best guys on the team, so when they do ask me to step up and knock a home run out, I’m capable of doing my job. It definitely opened my eyes up, with the Brazilians being on the team, made me realize how important life is and how much we love this sport of bull riding.”

Hevalow’s teammate Dias is currently ranked No. 1 in the Unleash The Beast World Championship standings and finished second in the PBR Teams regular-season MVP race.

“It’s cool to see a guy on your team go out and ride bulls and be No. 1 in the world,” Hevalow said. “Even during the Teams season, it was really cool to see him go ride bulls. That builds your confidence as much as when you rode a bull built his confidence – you have each other’s backs. During the individual season, it’s not like you’re competing. Yeah, at the end of the season, there’s only one guy that gets the world title, but when it comes down to it, it’s you vs. the bull. It’s always been like that, and it’ll never change. Just stay on your bulls, do your job, keep it friendly and root each other on. That’s how bull riding should be.”

Hevalow and Dias will next be in action this weekend when the Unleash The Beast returns in Albany, New York, with the PBR Albany on Dec. 29-30. Hevalow takes on Old School Cool (10-5, all levels) in Round 1, which begins at 7:45 p.m. ET on RidePass on Pluto TV.

Hevalow is riding this season with a fire in him after falling short of a PBR Teams Championship. While he wants to win the gold buckle, it all starts with staying consistent.

“The guys who perform the most win the most,” Hevalow said. “So I think if I ride my bulls every weekend and make the short round consistently, there’s going to be some way, somehow, that I’m going to stay within the Top 10 or Top 5 and be in contention in the race for a world title. So it’s important to me to stay consistent every weekend and stay on everything they run underneath me.”

Photo courtesy of Todd Brewer/Bull Stock Media