Rolling medical clinic patches up rodeo competitors

When rodeo contestants aren’t riding they aren’t making money.

They don’t get paid for sitting on the sidelines. Nor are they allotted sick days. Consequently, it’s no understatement that an injury can be a tough blow for a cowboy.

Given that many riders get on a 2,000 pound animal without the cushion of medical insurance, a few stitches can translate into hundreds of dollars in hospital bills.

But there is a saving grace. Acting as a hospital on wheels, the Justin Sportsmedicine Team provides free medical services to contestants at more than 125 of the 600 Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association rodeos annually. Local athletic trainers, physical therapists and doctors volunteer to patch up everything from lacerations to broken limbs.

Minutes before the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Wednesday, bull rider D.J. Domangue iced his ankle in the medical team’s trailer outside the Norris-Penrose Event Center.

Domangue broke his fibula three months ago, and a bull stepped on his leg  last week. Injuries are common when one’s line of work consists of riding a bucking horse or raging bull, and it’s the medical  team that keeps cowboys in the competition.

“They’re like family. They’ve seen every part of my body,” Domangue said, stirring a chuckle out of the trainers. “A hoof got caught in my butt and ripped a hole into it a few weeks ago. I got 17 stitches in the trailer.”

Without the mobile clinics, contestants would face more hospital visits, heftier bills and time spent not making money, Domangue said.

The team typically consists of two or three doctors and three or four athletic trainers or physical therapists. Program director Rick Foster arranges for a handful of  volunteers from each city to join him. Wednesday’s team pulled from the Olympic Training Center, the Air Force Academy and Premier Orthopedics.

Three mobile centers cover more than 87,000 miles of rodeo territory each year, providing more than $2 million worth of services, the only return in investment being that contestants wear Justin Boot Company products and can walk at the end of the day.

Bareback rider Heath Ford shuffled into the trailer mid-show, telling the team he was in pain from being thrown from his horse three weeks ago. Physical therapist Jeff Newman did a muscle energy technique to ease the pain.

“I’m better,” Ford said before walking out.

For health care professionals like Newman, who has helped the team in Colorado Springs and Denver for 16 years, volunteering gives them a chance to pick the brains of others in the profession and learn new techniques. Most rewarding, however, is the bond they forge with the cowboys — a relationship unique from ones they form with any other type of athlete, they said.

“It’s personal,” Newman said. “There’s not one of them that doesn’t say thank you. You can’t put a price on that.”

It’s challenging to protect athletes who are injured but need to keep working.

“One of our overall challenges is these guys want to ride, and they need to ride to make money,” Foster said, noting that many of Wednesday’s competitors came from Cowboy Christmas in Calgary and had been on a dozen horses in a week’s time.

Treating injuries sometimes takes creativity, like the customized forearm pad Margie Hunt, an athletic trainer at the Olympic Training Center, made for a bareback rider.

“For me, it’s about figuring out the puzzle,” Hunt said.

Barrel rider Sierra Thomas sat in the back of the trailer icing a torn right shoulder, an electric muscle stimulator controlling the pain before her second barrel run that day. Foster congratulated Thomas on “cowgirling up” through her injury.

“They keep us going,” Thomas said.

Freestyle bullfighter Andy Burelle has depended on the team for years.

Since his job is to take the hit for bull riders, his list of injuries includes a broken ankle, a dislocated knee cap,  a twice broken nose and a torn tendon in his leg — all cared for by the medical team.

“They worry about me like my mother would. They’ll come to the hospital and see me. You won’t find that in other sports,” Burelle said after having his ankles taped for stability.

When he broke his ankle in 2006, Burelle refused ambulance assistance and instead drove four hours to have surgery done by a doctor from the medical team, who helped accelerate the rehabilitation process.

“If we don’t work, we can’t pay doctor’s bills. Normal doctors don’t realize what doctors with Justin Sportsmedicine do,” Burelle said.

JUSTIN BOOT COMPANY

In 1980, former Dallas Cowboys team physician J. Pat Evans and athletic trainer Don Andrews established the concept of a mobile medical support system for rodeo contestants, which combined treatment from athletic trainers, physical therapists, orthopedists, emergency physicians and massage therapists.

The Justin Boot Company, a western boot retailer out of Texas, sponsored the endeavor in 1981 and today provides more than $2.5 million annually as the medical team’s sole sponsor.