Healthy Outhier claims second career Linderman Award.

Posted Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Along with the second Linderman Award of his career, the 2007 season brought Mike Outhier a new appreciation for how the other half lives.

Primarily a roughstock cowboy when he won his first Linderman in 2004, Outhier didn’t cash any bareback riding checks this year, instead concentrating his efforts on saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping and team roping.

A series of injuries wiped out big chunks of his 2005 and 2006 seasons. Outhier, of Utopia, Texas, tore knee ligaments in Denver in 2005, then busted all the blood vessels in his thigh the next year and, after a three-month rehab, got run over by a pickup man and broke the C-5 vertebra in his neck.

“I focused a little bit more on my roping while I was recovering from the thigh injury,” Outhier said, “and then after I hurt my neck, I was just riding and roping. I’d done some team roping in a few local events, but hooked up with Steele Montague and made team roping part of my schedule. We didn’t win a lot, but we won enough.

“Timed-event competition is just very different from saddle bronc riding. There is so much more to the travel. When you get three to four saddle bronc riders together, it just seems like you get on down the road faster. The timed-event travel is kind of tough.”

Saddle bronc riding is still Outhier’s bread and butter, the event that has gotten him to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo four times. The $47,669 he made at it this year allowed him to finish 19th in the Crusher Rentals PRCA World Standings and stood as the bulk of what he needed to win the Linderman Award.

To qualify for the Linderman, a contestant has to make at least $1,000 in each of three events, including a roughstock event and a timed event. Outhier earned $4,196 in tie-down roping and $2,827 in team roping for a total of $54,693, and that was enough to beat five-time Linderman winner Kyle Whitaker of Chambers, Neb., who banked $44,246 in steer wrestling, tie-down roping and saddle bronc riding.

They were the only cowboys to officially meet the criteria this year, although Trell Etbauer, 22, would have made it had he purchased his card. Etbauer, the son of two-time World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider Robert Etbauer, earned $12,715 with more than $1,000 each in saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping and steer wrestling while still competing on his permit.

For Outhier, the Linderman Award was important for a couple of reasons, because it honors cowboys who work both ends of the arena and because it demonstrated he is getting close to being fully healthy again.

“My left shoulder took a long time to heal (from the cervical injury),” Outhier said. “For a while there, when I tried to pick up a gallon of milk, I couldn’t do it. It still fatigues pretty quickly and burns. I keep working on it.

“I had knee surgery, then thigh surgery and then the (neck) injury. I haven’t been 100 percent for three years. Before that, I had no problems at all, not a blemish. But I rode decent all this year. I went to 70 rodeos, and I can build on that. I’d rather make a living riding broncs and go to Vegas than anything.”