PUEBLO, Colo. (March 2, 2010) - Sean Willingham has an easy way of doing things.
At home or on the road, he’s about as uptight as an ice-tea-on-the-screen-porch Georgia afternoon.
So when Versus associate producer Chris Taylor-Shaut discovered last weekend that Willingham has been to 167 Built Ford Tough Series events in a row, no one thought it was possible.
There had to be one or two that he missed.
“There (was) a couple in there that concerned me because I had a couple injuries,” said Willingham, who was fairly sure he hadn’t missed an event since late 2004. “It’s amazing and still going strong, too, and I don’t plan on missing. If I sit at home I can’t win money, or I don’t have a chance to do good somewhere else.”
Only Luke Snyder (275) and J.W. Hart (197) have ever attended more consecutive Cup-level events than Willingham.
To put Willingham’s streak into perspective, he’s gone over five seasons without missing an event for any reason, and he’s still 30 events – essentially an entire calendar year – shy of tying Hart.
Even then, he’d be roughly another 30 months away from approaching Snyder’s record, which is perceived by most as unbreakable. If the PBR were to maintain an average of 30 BFTS events per season, it would take until August or September of 2013 for the 28-year-old Willingham to set a new record.
“That’s unreal,” the Georgia rider said. “It doesn’t seem like I’ve been to that many bull ridings in a row, and even Luke, 275, that’s going to be something tough to catch anyway.
“I just love riding bulls and I don’t ever want to miss a weekend, so that’s why we’re here, I guess.”
Through eight years on the BFTS, Willingham has finished in the Top 20 five times.
In 199 events – five of which he’s won – he’s attempted 548 bulls for a career riding average of 46 percent. In 2006, he covered a career-high 54 percent of his bulls and finished a career-best fourth in the world,.
At some point this year, he’s likely to surpass $1 million in career earnings. Not bad for someone who grew up team roping and didn’t get on his first bull until he was 15.
“The more events you go to, the more points you accumulate,” he said. “If you miss an event, that can put you back almost at least 1,000 points behind the No. 1 guy just in one weekend.
“The more you’re here the best chance you have to win.”
The streak nearly came to end earlier this season, when Willingham thought he might have pulled his groin, but wound up with a bruised muscle underneath the groin. He didn’t finish the Sacramento, Calif., event, but was well enough to compete the next week in Anaheim, Calif.
Three weeks later, he was kicked in the head at an event in Oklahoma City, and didn’t finish that event either.
“It’s not as easy as it used to be,” Willingham said. “When I first started coming around here I’d just show up, get on and ride, and not worry about being in shape or going to the gym hard every day. But going to the World Finals last year really made me realize that I’m getting older, and you can’t hang with these young guys. Their body handles it a lot better, so I’ve been to the gym four days a week with two different personal trainers since November.”
What about last year’s PBR World Finals served as a wakeup call?
“I didn’t ride (anything),” he said, laughing. “That’s exactly what it is. I got skunked, and that’s the first year I’ve ever been skunked in Las Vegas.
“That just made me, as a bull rider, say, ‘Hey, I have to step up my game. I need to get in the gym.’ It may work or it may not work, but I was always working out when I was younger and it made sense. The more I worked out the better I rode.”
A natural athlete since childhood, Willingham played all sorts of sports before deciding on bull riding as a profession.
Aside from team roping, he played baseball, but gave it up because he didn’t like to hit as much as pitch. He played some football in high school. He also played basketball, but gave it up for bull riding because there aren’t a lot of 5-foot-10 players in the NBA.
That was then, and this now.
And after going 0-for-7 last fall in Las Vegas, he hired two trainers. One, James Manning, is a mixed martial arts trainer. The other, Renee Martin, happens to be his sister.
“I’ve been going two days a week with her and two days a week with this other guy,” said Willingham, who joked that Martin is mean to him when they train together. “She works on more of my core and he works on my quickness and my balance.
“She thinks that’s what it’s going to take for me to do good, is to be in shape.”
NEWS and NOTES
PBR NOW on RFD-TV: Hosted by J.W. Hart and Justin McBride, “PBR NOW” is a weekly live one-hour TV series that airs every Thursday on RFD-TV at 10 p.m. ET. Fans are encouraged to call in with questions at 866-547-9696, or email them to pbr@rfdtv.com.
Event Center: Follow all the action from this week’s BFTS event in Kansas City, by logging on to www.pbr.com and entering the “Event Center,” which is accessible from the tab located at the top of the main Web page. The Event Center provides live scoring, live blogging and event-related Podcasts and interviews.
