New York, NY (January 11, 2010) - He’s no longer simply J.B. Mauney’s brother-in-law.
His name is Shane Proctor.
And you’re likely to hear a lot more from the 24-year-old from Grand Coulee, Wash., because going back to last season he’s now won two of the past six Built Ford Tough Series events, including the New York City Invitational this weekend at Madison Square Garden.
Proctor won the opening round and never looked back as he dominated the field of 40 riders throughout the third event of the 2010 season.
He started off the three-day event with a 91.25-point effort on Bones, followed with an 86.75-point ride on Big Coyote. Then it was 86.25 points on Walk the Line before sealing his second BFTS win on RFD-TV for 90.75 points in the championship round.
Afterward, he credited his recent success to his move to North Carolina after marrying Mauney’s sister Jessi.
“Originally I’m a Washington cowboy, and I’ll always be a Washington cowboy,” said Proctor, who recorded the top two scores of the weekend, “but moving to North Carolina has helped me step up my game.”
An elated Proctor, who will compete on Tuesday at a Touring Pro event in Denver, also said that until last year he had struggled, and the key to his success is having learned “how to win events.”
“I learned to win,” he added, “and that’s a really big aspect. I was on tour for about four years and I wasn’t getting things done. … Coming to North Carolina I had to step up my game…to learn how to win, and it really built my confidence up.
“My goal is to ride to win every event, and if I can just keep spurring and keep going at them, take it to every bull I can.”
Proctor struggled in his first three years until finishing 11th in the world standings a year ago, when he more than doubled his Top 10 finishes with six, including his first win in Portland, Ore.
This year he’s covered six of nine bulls for an average of 66.67 percent, which is nearly a full 30 percent above his career average of 36.82 percent.
After an impressive Finals, Proctor failed to qualify for the short go in Atlanta. But last week in Baltimore he finished the event ninth, and with this weekend’s win he finds himself ranked fourth in the overall standings behind Mauney, Guilherme Marchi and Travis Briscoe.
In fact, the complexion of the world standings completely changed from a week ago when the Top 3 spots were dominated by a trio of Brazilians – Marchi, Robson Palermo and Valdiron de Oliveira.
This week’s Top 3 event finishers, who all went 4-for-4, did enough to establish themselves in the Top 5.
“Obviously my brother-in-law rode Code Blue today,” Proctor said, “a bull the stock contractors said would never be rode. It wasn’t a big score, but there was a whole lot of try from it so it was great watching him ride that bull, and that really pumped me up to ride RFD-TV.”
Riding with a torn MCL, Mauney sacrificed his right knee for the sake of a qualified ride, and although he scored only 76.25 points for hanging on the side of the bull, his effort over the course of the entire weekend was rewarded with the current No. 1 ranking in the world.
There were five qualified rides in the championship round to go along with 18 in Round 3.
In all, the riders made the whistle 59 times out of 135 outs.
The fourth stop on the BFTS will be Friday night in Sacramento, Calif., when the Sacramento Classic gets underway at ARCO Arena.
