'We are the NFL in 1962': Researchers say professional bull rider who killed himself had CTE

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Oct 12, 2017, 01:35 PM - Edit history (1)

‘We are the NFL in 1962’: Researchers say professional bull rider who killed himself had CTE

By Matt Bonesteel October 11 at 1:21 PM

Ty Pozzobon’s family says he suffered at least 12 concussions during his professional bull riding career, but the worst happened in November 2014 when he was thrown by a 1,500-pound beast named Boot Strap Bill. Pozzobon was unconscious before he hit the ground, but then the bull stepped on his head, shattering the hockey helmet he was wearing for protection. ... “The look in his eyes changed after that,” his mother, Leanne, told Maclean’s in February, about a month after he took his own life in British Columbia at the age of 25. “He used to have these dark, dark eyes that really shone. But for this past year and a half, they’d gone dull.”

His eyes only told part of the story. Four days before his death, Pozzobon’s mother said he suffered a panic attack at a supermarket. The day before he died, she told Maclean’s, the 2016 Professional Bull Riders Canada champion and four-time PBR world finalist announced that he planned to sell his herd of 120 cattle, only to repeatedly change his mind and then change it back again over the course of the day. That erratic behavior, combined with anxiety and depression, led Pozzobon’s family to ask researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine to examine his brain after his death.

They found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease that has been linked to repeated head trauma. ... “Superficially, his brain looked pretty good, like any 25-year-old’s should,” said Dirk Keene, one of the researchers who looked at Pozzobon’s brain, told the Vancouver Sun. But looking closer under a microscope, Keene said the signs of CTE were there. ... Keene and colleague Christine MacDonald told the Sun that they believe Pozzobon to be the first professional bull rider whose brain showed signs of CTE, which for now can only be diagnosed after a person has died.

Starting with the 2013 season, a year before Pozzobon’s most notorious spill, Professional Bull Riders started requiring contestants born after Oct. 15, 1994, to wear helmets. Riders born before that date could make their own decisions on protective headgear. PBR’s official website says “over 50 percent” choose to wear one, but do they actually do any good? ... “What I can tell you is that there does not appear to be a statistically significant difference between riders with helmets versus without helmets in the number of concussions received yet,” Tandy Freeman, PBR’s longtime medical team leader, told the New York Times in 2015. .... “We are the NFL in 1962,” Chad Besplug, a former champion bull rider and friend of Pozzobon’s, told Maclean’s. “None of us wants to change the nature of bull riding — these guys want to compete, and that’s what makes them beautiful. But it’s also what makes us a danger to ourselves.”

https://twitter.com/MattBonesteel

Previously at DU:

2016 Canadian champion bull rider Ty Pozzobon dies at age 25

Family say Pozzobon was suffering from concussions, depression

Ty Pozzobon: head injuries derailed promising bull riding career

San Antonio friends, family recall troubled last days of rising star bull rider

From an article in a local newspaper:

Provincial posted October 10, 2017 by Dylan McCullough

Brain of professional bull rider Ty Pozzobon diagnosed with CTE

The brain of professional bull rider and Merritt, B.C. native Ty Pozzobon showed signs of neuropathologic changes diagnostic of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), confirmed the University of Washington School of Medicine Neuropathology Core on Tuesday.



Photo Credit: Contributed.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease linked to the sort of repeated head traumas common in contact sports and has been proven to lead to severe depression, aggression, and early dementia.

After dying from suicide in January, the family of the 25-year-old professional bull rider suspected that his death was the result of repeated head injuries and concussions sustained during his rodeo career.



Photo Credit:Facebook.

....
Ty Pozzobon is the first confirmed case of CTE in a professional bull rider.

[procon]

1. When you think about all the sports that might cause head traumas to those who

participate, is the money worth the human cost? Is anyone explaining the risks involved to the kids who want to play professional sports, and would they even grasp the dangers? Its not just the players themselves, but their families that will suffer.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. You might be surprised at how young some of the kids who take up bull riding are.

Last edited Thu Oct 12, 2017, 03:36 PM - Edit history (1)

I'll link to a video later, when I have a faster connection.

You can find them all over Youtube.

Here's one:

http://cw33.com/2014/08/08/riding-high-check-out-junior-bull-riders/

I'm still looking for one I have in mind.

This has a link to it:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/kids-young-eight-risking-lives-5443528

Here it is: "Unreported World: America’s Cowboy Kids." There seem to be several uploads of this, not all of them well done.

You can find individual segments at the Channel 4 Youtube Channel, such as this one:

* * * * *

I watch the PBR when it's on the free TV. On Sunday, CBS ran an hour of the 15/15 Bucking Battle from Nampa, Idaho.

15/15 DEWALT GUARANTEED TOUGH INVITATIONAL 10/07/17

Two riders earned points. The other thirteen got bucked off. They ended up with nothing to show for their work, other then what they were paid by their sponsors.

Which reminds me: MIC giant Textron is now producing ATVs?

Anyway, those bull riders get shaken around like a rag doll. They have something like eight times the injury of football players. It's not just concussions, either.

There's a high school rodeo association in just about every state, but you don't find too many individual high school rodeo teams east of the Missouri River. Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, sure. But you don't have playoffs and a state champion from sea to shining sea.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. We are hearing about Hockey Players

which would fit right in with head injuries. And Socker players are showing CTE issues.

[KT2000]

4. the main topic of conversation

among bull riders and other rodeo participants is their injuries. They share their history of injuries to describe their ride. Spent a bit of time with these people and was shocked at how they regard their injuries - as something to be proud of. The whole thing is sick IMHO - the rodeo circuit is horrible for the animals who I am sure do not want to have injuries. The people are idiots for instigating life-long ailments.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Bull rider questions his own repeated head injuries after Ty Pozzobon's death

Bull rider questions his own repeated head injuries after Ty Pozzobon's death

Veteran rider says concussions 'inherent' in the sport, worries about long-term impacts on himself

By Liam Britten, CBC News Posted: Oct 12, 2017 4:22 PM PT Last Updated: Oct 12, 2017 4:22 PM PT

Merritt, B.C., bull rider Ty Pozzobon died at age 25. Researchers diagnosed him post-mortem with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

In 15 years as a serious, competitive bull rider, Raven Gordon of Quesnel had his fair share of injuries. ... Broken bones. Dislocated shoulders. And about a dozen concussions — but the exact number of those is hard to pin down.

"Not really 100 per cent sure. You're trying to think back and remember," he told On The Coast host Stephen Quinn. ... "I never really thought a whole lot about it before … there's a part of me that would be really interested to know what kind of long-term impacts, if any, there has been from my injuries."

• Traumatic brain injury confirmed in young B.C. bull rider who took his own life

Gordon says concussions are becoming a greater concern for bull riders like himself, his sons and nephews after Merritt bull rider Ty Pozzobon took his own life. ... After his death, the 25-year-old was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease linked to repetitive brain injury.
....

Still many CTE unknowns

UBC professor of medicine Cheryl Wellington says, in North America, about three million concussions are reported every year. ... Seventy per cent are suffered by children and adolescents and one in five Canadians will report a sports-related concussion. ... "We really do not know, within that vast number of people, how many will go on to develop CTE," she told The Early Edition host Rick Cluff. ... "Critically, we just don't know how many concussions are required to trigger CTE and whether that might be different, by, for example, the position a person plays on a hockey or football team or how other sports like bull riding or soccer … what the exposure rate might be."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. Can rodeo be safer and still be rodeo?

OPINION

Can rodeo be safer – and still be rodeo?

PETER SHAWN TAYLOR
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
NOVEMBER 18, 2017

....
Thirty years ago, I dabbled in bareback bronc riding while working on a ranch near Cody, Wyo. It was an exciting and exotic pursuit for a young university graduate from Ontario. Bull riding, however, made far less sense to this economics major. When a horse bucks you off, it's happy enough to trot away for a good feed. When bulls throw their riders, however, they're not so quick to head for the exit. A bull will often circle around to make sure that bothersome pest never gets on its back again. Such malicious intent, and the vast difference in size, explain the outsized risks faced by bull riders.

All this was bunkhouse lore long before medical science proved it so. Nonetheless, among the other wranglers on the ranch all those years ago, bull riding was widely preferred over broncs. Trying to stay on a 1,600-pound beast intent on doing you physical harm was simply the toughest thing anyone could think of doing. Rodeo, and bull riding in particular, is popular and culturally significant in many parts of Canada largely because it represents the ultimate test of gall and guts. The skill on display is a willingness to face the threat of injury or death without complaint. Few human activities are so focused on the danger inherent to the act, and with such dramatically poor odds.

The neurological trauma and related impacts experienced by rodeo stars such as Mr. Pozzobon have clear parallels in other male-dominated warrior pursuits. Yet professional sports boast an obvious camaraderie of support, as well as a central organizing structure that can impose change when necessary. In 1905, for example, 18 U.S. football players died on the playing field due to the brutal nature of the sport at the time. Vast public outrage led to dramatic rule changes, including the invention of the forward pass, which quieted critics ? for a century, at least. The same sense of shared responsibility holds true in military service as well. The Navy Seal's motto of "two is one and one is none" speaks to the collective nature of individual safety in an intrinsically deadly occupation.

Such collectivism doesn't hold for cowboys. Independence and solitude have always been central to cowboy mythology, and that remains the case today in rodeo. There are no teams of rough stock rodeo riders and no one to tell them what to do. They remain private contractors who pick their own schedules and make their own decisions on whether they're fit to ride. ... The taciturn figure beloved of western movies who lives by a code of his own choosing, clears the town of villains and rides off alone into sunset thus has its real-life analogue in the battered but determined bull rider rosining up for another go-round. Deliberately putting oneself in harm's way is part of this time-honoured tradition. So is a cool sense of detachment. Safer rodeo, if such a thing is possible, will require a dramatic break in the cowboy customs of individuality, freedom and looking danger straight in the bull's eye. Otherwise, it could be heading for its final sunset.