With a restless and frustrated crowd and only one rider to beat, Reid Arnold mounted the final bull of the night. The bull tried its best to buck Arnold, but he survived for the full eight seconds and turned to the judges. The scores were tallied, and Arnold put up 90 points for the best ride of the night and the victory.
Arnold took home the gold at the Greenfield X-Treme Bulls bull riding competition, part of the International Pro Rodeo Association, on Thursday night, as he was one of only two riders out of 25 total competitors to complete the eight seconds.
“I tried that bull last year in Arizona, so I knew that bull was good. He bucked me off down there,” Arnold said. “I said, ‘You can shake me once, you’re not going to shake me again.’”
The event got off to a slow start as the first seven riders went down without a fight, the longest bout lasting about three seconds. Things momentarily changed as Trace Scarlavi stepped into the ring and looked completely unfazed as he unflinchingly rode his bull to an 83 and a spot in the finals. Hunter Ball followed right behind him with a run which made it nearly six seconds to bring the crowd right back into the action as the first round came to a close.
The rest of the night went quietly as only one other competitor came close to completing his ride. Arnold was bucked off with less than a second to go, with no rider lasting more than a couple seconds in the third and final preliminary round, bringing the crowd to a boiling point of agitation.
The first three riders of the short round saw an early exit, and Scarlavi got back on the bull with a chance to close out the night, but he came up short, leaving the door open for Arnold. Arnold got back in the pen, took a deep breath, and snatched victory away from Scarlavi as the sun set, sending a crowd that had been waiting all night for a reason to cheer into a frenzy.
“You can’t ride them all, and we know that as bull riders,” Arnold said of how he kept focused after his near-miss in the first round. “You just have to knock them down one by one, come back in the short round smiling, and have fun. That’s what we do it for.”
As the Hancock County Fair came to a close, Arnold gave the crowd one final thing to cheer for before hitting the road again to try to ride another bull the next night.
