Crystal Wise
Seven-time bull riding world champion Sage Kimzey.
It’s nearly half past 7 p.m. at Dickies Arena as professional bull rider Sage Kimzey begins to mentally prepare for his upcoming ride at this year’s Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo’s two-night event known as Bulls Night Out.
Tonight, Kimzey has drawn a bull named Trunk Monkey, which he says is a “nice little bull,” in a very tongue-in-cheek joking kind of way. And even though he’s mere minutes from jumping on this behemoth’s back, he's calm as a mill pond.
Crystal Wise
Kimzey, who is a seven-time bull riding world champion, is at a point in his career where he is looked at and considered an elder statesman of the sport, given he’s the ripe ol’ age of 29. His calm demeanor is almost Zen-like as he quietly walks the labyrinth of passages that run under Dickies Arena. The smell of the fresh raked dirt fills the air just as we round the corner to the backend of the bucking chutes.
However, like so many bull riders before him, Kimzey’s journey back into the chutes was iffy at best, given he underwent full shoulder reconstructive surgery in 2022. Needless to say, he missed a majority of that season while on the mend, which is, in some part, the fuel that has him still aching for action although he’s rounding 30.
“It's kind of like the last-ditch effort to fix it,” Kimzey says in regard to the surgery. “They actually had to take part of my lat and make it my subcap, one of my rotator cuffs, and so yeah, I mean that's pretty much the last fix for it to be a stable shoulder. Now it’s stable enough to get on a bull without it posing an issue.”
But this injury isn’t a fresh one. In fact, Kimzey explained that his left shoulder has been giving him problems since he first injured it during a bull ride in high school.
“Yeah, I've had an unstable shoulder for years,” he says. “Before I finally dislocated it, it was always relatively stable in the socket. [I] never had to worry about a dislocation. When it came out at Weatherford, Texas in 2022 and I had to have it fixed.”
And although he's made a full recovery from this operation, he’s experienced a decrease in bone mass in his left shoulder, which means he’s more susceptible to injuring it in the event of a collision.
However, this reality hasn’t slowed Kimzey down one bit. When asked how much he’s got left in him, he replied, “hard to say. As long as my body holds up, I could ride until I'm 40.”
On the flipside of this notion, is the reality that with the more bumps and bruises he sustains, the shorter his career could become.
“It’s so hard to put a number on it,” Kimzey says. “Whenever it's not fun for me anymore, I'll quit.”
And if he were hang up his chaps tomorrow, Kimzey will still walk away a from the sport of bull riding a bonefide legend. Throughout his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) career, Kimzey has amassed a whopping $3 million in earnings. During this timeframe, Kimzey became the youngest millionaire in PRCA history in his 2016 season, when he was only 22 years old. Let’s get one thing straight, this is his profession and how he plans to put food on the table for his family for years to come.
Crystal Wise
Kimzey even smiled when asked if he was really in this sport for the thrill and adrenaline of it. “No,” he says while shaking his head with a grin. “I’m in it for the paycheck.”
Post ride, Kimzey made first place in his first round with a score of 89.5 points, which garnered him a paycheck of $5,562. By the end of the night, over $61K was paid out to the sundry of riders that held their own once the chutes were open.
As for words of wisdom he might impart to other up-and-coming aspiring bull riders, Kimzey sums it up in one word — sacrifice.
“If this is something you really want to do, be willing to sacrifice for it because it's a very difficult sport in a lot of ways, mentally, physically, [and] emotionally,” he says. “It is a very taxing sport. It's not something for the faint of heart — but if it is something that's in your heart and you can't get rid of it — you're willing to put your whole heart forward and go get whatever your ultimate goal is with the sport — it is a very rewarding sport at the end of the day.”
