PRORODEO Sports News February Digital Edition

how tamed the beast to earn his world championship. “He didn’t look like that with Chris. He didn’t look like the most unbelievable handful,” Steiner said. “You’d have to have seen other people on him to know. Everybody knew that horse, and he was one of the all-time baddest eliminators. For Chris’ gold buckle, he didn’t just draw it, he earned it by that ride.” LeDoux earned a 78-point ride on Stormy Weather to finish sec ond in Round 10 and clinch his lone PRCA World Championship. He earned $4,912 at the NFR, $1,170 more than the reserve world champ and NFR average winner Jack Ward Jr. LIFE CHANGING LeDoux’s life, music career and stint as a PRORODEO athlete were defined by authenticity. For years, LeDoux sold eight tracks of his records out of the back of his truck along the rodeo road. He didn’t really play gigs while he criss-crossed the country in search of a gold buckle, but he always brought his guitar to strum out a song around a fire or behind the bucking chutes. LeDoux wrote songs about what he knew — harping on his ranching roots in Wyoming and life on the road as a rodeo cowboy. “There are guys that rodeo and ranch, but he’s the only one who was ever a world champ and also a very successful singer-songwriter himself,” his son Ned LeDoux said. “It’s kind of flattering when somebody who doesn’t rodeo or wrench writes a song about it as long as it’s done right. But when you have that background and then write and sing about it, people are going to believe you. Because oth erwise, you’re just pretending.” After LeDoux’s world champi onship, his music career started to take off. He sold more than 250,000 albums without a record deal. LeDoux’s parents, siblings and en tire family set out to make his career as a singer-songwriter successful.

“I was able to start riding and winning by late summer,” Le Doux penned in the chapter on 1976 for The Finals: A Complete History of the National Finals Rodeo (1998). “I finally won enough money to guarantee my NFR qualification. “Man, the electricity and adrenaline at the NFR could power New York City for a year.” LeDoux’s support system, in cluding his wife, Peggy Rhoads, ensured he was ready to compete at his fifth NFR in Oklahoma City. “My mom built this homemade strap, or whatever you want to call it, to keep it in place,” Chris’s son Ned LeDoux recalled. “He made one ride, and everything stayed together. And he thought, ‘Maybe this is going to work.’” After four rounds at Jim Norick Arena, LeDoux estab lished himself as a legitimate gold buckle contender. He won the second go-round with an 80-point ride and placed third in Round 4 with a 75-point ride. LeDoux kept pushing with a sec ond-place finish in Round 7 thanks to a 73-point trip. TOUGH DRAW When Round 10 rolled around, LeDoux was third and Chick Elms sat atop the leaderboard. LeDoux needed a big trip to finish atop the world, but he drew a horse nobody wanted, a ferocious bucker from Steiner Rodeo Company named Stormy Weather. “Nobody wanted Stormy Weather,” LeDoux said. “In an earlier go-round, he had slammed (ProRodeo Hall of Famer and five-time bareback riding world champion) Bruce Ford into the ground, and all year that horse had been throwing guys off or jerking their collarbones apart.” LeDoux arrived at the arena two hours early ahead of the final perfor mance, and 1973 RCA Bull Riding World Champion Bobby Steiner was there with his dad and the horse’s owner, ProRodeo Hall of Famer Tom my Steiner. The duo wished him luck, but in Le Doux’s chapter in The Finals, he said,

Chris LeDoux was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2005 as a bareback rider and notable. His rodeo career included five trips to the National Finals Rodeo.

“I’m sure (Tommy) wants me to buck off so his horse will win bareback horse of the year.” “He was a legitimate great big buckskin,” Bobby Steiner said of Stormy Weather. “It was a bucker, but they didn’t ride. If you did ride, you couldn’t ride him good. There were only two legitimate good rides on that horse that I consider good enough rides, by Chris and Rusty Riddle, that ever got by that horse pretty damn good. That’s because he was what no one wanted to get on, and that’s what Chris had.” LeDoux said he felt like he may have gotten ready for the ride too early and remembered having to level himself out as the first six or seven bareback riders loaded into the chutes. But when it was his turn to make a ride, he was ready. “This is the only ride of my life that matters,” LeDoux said. “Live or die or get crippled, it doesn’t matter. This is the demon we all must stand up to at some point in our life.” Bobby Steiner said LeDoux some-

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