PUEBLO, Colo. – Cassio Dias.
Boudreaux Campbell.
Joao Ricardo Vieira.
Rafael Jose de Brito.
Dalton Kasel.
Silvano Alves.
Dener Barbosa.
All truly accomplished bull riders, and they all have one thing in common: they’ve been bucked off by Cool Whip.
Vieira was the last rider to make the 8-second whistle aboard the cream-colored bovine… more than two years ago, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April of 2022.
Since then, Cool Whip has been perfect.
Last month, at the 2024 PBR World Finals: Unleash The Beast, Cool Whip’s buckoff streak entered the annals of PBR history when he dispatched Claudio Montanha Jr. for his 43rd consecutive buckoff.
This broke three-time YETI World Champion Bull and PBR legend Bushwacker’s iconic streak of 42 consecutive buckoffs.
When asked how proud she is of her beloved bovine, owner Staci Addison paused to collect her thoughts.
“This big long pause that I just gave you is kind of indicative of how I feel,” she said. “It’s hard to put it into words because I really have nothing to do with it and then everything to do with it because I love him so much. He takes up so much of my brain because I think about him a lot, and my heart because I love him so much, yet I can’t influence how he does. And then he does it again! It’s absolutely incredible how proud I am of him, just to be associated with that strong of an athlete, and to be standing on the sideline of the sprinkles that he casts.
“He has that record forever. Not that it can’t be broken, and I can’t wait until the day it is broken, because that’s why we keep track of stuff. But until then, he’s the most buckin’-off bull ever. It’s unreal. I’m still having a hard time wrapping my head around it.”
RELATED: Cool Whip ties Bushwacker’s record streak of 42 consecutive buckoffs
It’s a far cry from the bull Addison purchased as a yearling at the 2019 PBR World Finals. It was an incredibly mediocre season for him, but Addison knew he had potential.
“You could tell by what he did when that gate cracked open that he had a lot of skill, just a natural,” she said. “Some bulls, you can go, ‘Wow, if this bull ever gets his stuff together!’ I don’t know how many times we said that on the ranch. So we felt like he was special or that he had some raw talent when he was a yearling.”
Stock contractor HD Page hauled Cool Whip for his futurity year when he was a 2-year-old, and Addison flanked him when he bucked with cowgirls.
“Our first out, he and I got a 52. And I thought, ‘Ooh, I’ve got to be doing something wrong,’” Addison said. “I knew that it was me – I was not flanking him correctly, so I went back to HD and said, ‘We’ve got to go back to flanking school so I can get this right.’ And once I at least learned how to do it, he did all the rest. I just put the rope on the right spot, and then he started cracking it every time that gate opened.”
Cool Whip improved during his futurity year and then won his derby year. As a classic bull, when he was 4 years old, he won the 2022 ABBI Classic Championship.
As a 5-year-old, he was in the running for the 2023 YETI World Champion Bull title, ultimately fading down the stretch and finishing fourth.
“I was disappointed because I wanted him to win, but I also suggested that we pull him out of Finals, not because I knew he couldn’t win, but because I thought his hips were sore,” Addison said. “He wasn’t injured, but he was sore. When you’re sore, you can compete, and when you’re injured, you can’t. And he was sore, and you could tell – the way he walked and moved, and when you touched him, he just didn’t feel at the top of his game. But we did compete him, and that’s fine. Fourth is nothing to shy away from.”
All the while, Cool Whip has been making the best riders in the world look silly. He made his premier series debut in 2022 and bucked off three-time World Champion Silvano Alves in his first out.
RELATED: Cool Whip extends buckoff streak to 41 – one short of Bushwacker’s all-time record
“It’s rare that you have a bull that can compete at every level,” Addison said. “You look at Cool Whip, and every year, he’s been a contender. He’s been consistently at the top of the heap, in the top three, four, five bulls every year, the entire year long. And that is super, super hard to do because of injuries, fatigue, growth. There aren’t many that have stayed at that level. That is very unusual. If you go back and look at bulls that stay relevant for one, two, three, four, five years in a row, there’s not very many of them. And I think that’s pretty special.”
On the last Saturday of the 2024 PBR World Finals, Addison made the trek out to bull housing for her most special moment yet with her special bull. Cool Whip was slated for his final out on Sunday, and Addison went when she knew bull housing would be quiet so she could spend some undisturbed time with him.
She slipped in a side door and spent 35 minutes rubbing and scratching him, just as he likes.
“I sat down, and I took his cheeks in my hands, through the pen, and I was kind of scratching underneath his cheeks and on his neck,” Addison said. “And I got him to focus, if you will. He wasn’t turning for all the scratches, and I just had a conversation with him and told him exactly what I knew to be true, which was that he could break a record tomorrow, and what an incredible accomplishment that is.
“And I had tears streaming down my cheeks, because it’s a big deal! My gosh, it’s a huge deal! And I just said, ‘Cool Whip, this is amazing. This is your opportunity.’ And of course, I sang to him and told him how much I love him, and how proud I am of him, and how I want him to try and, in his bull brain, be able to recognize what is happening, what is going on around him. ‘I don’t even know if you get this or not, but this is huge.’”
Cool Whip was the first bull out on Championship Sunday, and almost as soon as you were paying attention, it was over – he dumped Montanha in 1.18 seconds, the streak was broken, and it was onto the next ride.
RELATED: “Large chunk of athleticism” Cool Whip holds special place in stock contractor Addison’s heart
But a friend of Addison’s recorded her reaction – the leg bouncing with nervous energy, the clasped hands, the relief, the high-fives, and the goofy grin – and she’ll have that for the rest of her life.
“It was almost surreal because the show must go on. The next rider was out. The next bull was bucking. We’re onto the next thing,” Addison said. “And I think that that’s one of the things that strikes me about this achievement is, in life, and certainly in the sport of bull bucking, we’re always onto the next thing. We have another event. We have another out. We have another buckle to get, another check to cash. Whatever it is. And this right here stands in time, and I can pause time anytime I want and go back and watch the video of him bucking and the video of my reaction to him, and have that vivid memory seared in my head of he and I spending time together privately the day before. And that is a frozen-in-time moment for me that will be cataloged under the most buckoffs in history, and I’m really glad I have that.”
Where does one go from breaking the longest buckoff streak in PBR history?
Cool Whip is spending his summer doing his part to create some baby Cool Whips that could dominate bull riding for years to come – one, Whipped Cream, is already on his way up – while still making time for all the snacks and scratches his heart desires.
He is, as they say, living his best life.
Addison says the plan is to get him back into bucking shape in time for the PBR Camping World Team Series season, which begins with Wildcatter Days in Oklahoma City in July.
Only time will tell how long this record-setting buckoff streak will go.
“My gosh, someday he’s going to get ridden, and I’m going to cry – there’s no doubt in my mind, I’m going to cry,” Addison said. “But I’m going to be so proud of that bull rider that does that, and I will make an effort to go find him and congratulate him and tell him how important it is that he did that, because Cool Whip’s an incredible bull and has been an incredible bull for a long time. So when whoever gets to claim that as their own, it’s going to be a big day.”
Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
