Gold Buckle

A successful bull ride is eight seconds in hell on a ton of murderous fury. To win the gold buckle takes try - a cowboy noun for courage, concentration, and sheer grit - and lots of it. From its very first sentence, Gold Buckle vaults you directly into the rider's seat, swirling through the sights and sounds and heart-pounding excitement of professional bull riding. With a journalist's keen eye and a novelist's compelling style, Jeff Coplon reveals the private world of the bull rider - the toughest athlete in the world. Spanning a period of four years, the author travels on the cowboy's do-or-die circuit and meets the moneymen behind the sport, the Hall of Fame riders of the past, and the wives left behind. From rodeo's rough origins in the Wild West to today's high-stakes, neon-glazed National Finals showdown in Las Vegas, Coplon paints a vivid landscape, as much a portrait of the American West as of professional rodeo and the men who personify its tough and mysterious nature. Here are such legendary cowboys as Lane Frost, Tuff Hedeman, Ty Murray, Charles Sampson, Don Gay, Jim Shoulders, and Harry Tompkins. Gold Buckle is their extraordinary tale of riding, dreaming, of bearing out the pain and glory of each victory and defeat. This is their story - and that of every bull rider who ever reached for the ultimate, gleaming prize.