This is a day late because I was bleeding

The best reason yet to pull back on an assignment

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Proof that saying yes is always the best strategy

I live my life by one very simple rule:

If a source who has fed me great stories for two decades asks me if I want to participate in underwater training with professional bull riders, I say yes.

Andrew Giangola arranged for me to be an extra in Talladega Nights, talked me into attending a bull-riding event on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the pandemic, got me on the cover of The Sporting News, and more besides.

His philosophy of pitching me is to offer me opportunities that only a crazy person/nobody else would do.

And so it was that I flew to Texas on Monday to swim with members of the New York Mavericks, an expansion team in the Professional Bull Riders league. (They held their training camp down there.)

At a pool on the campus of Texas Wesleyan University, we spent six hours over three days pushing our mental and physical limits. The goal was to jack up our heart rates and induce fear/panic so we could learn to control them, important skills for anyone who experiences duress and absolutely crucial for a bull rider.

Whenever I got down to the bottom of the 12 foot pool, it felt like someone squeezed my forehead in a vice. I could almost hear my sinuses getting squished. I had to stop after about 20 minutes on Day 2 because that pressure caused my nose to bleed.

This is a first for me: I had to back off deep water exercises with professional bull riders during their training camp because my nose was bleeding. Even for Andrew Giangola stories, that’s whack-a-doodle.

The bleeding stopped on Day 3, so I resumed the training but stayed in shallower water.

I’ll have much, much more on that adventure later.

Oh, and just to be clear, the bulls weren’t in the water.

We couldn’t find goggles that fit them.

I tell this tale to say I’ve been doing a good bit of writing about rodeo lately, and I’ll share the stories that appeal to a broader audience. That one certainly will, and I think the one below does, too. It was published by Western Horseman, which is publishing my rodeo work.

This is a good example of my “eat the whole buffalo” philosophy. When I go on a trip, I wring as much out of it as I can. Because I was going to be in England anyway, I scouted around for a rodeo story and was delighted to find this one. The subjects of the story even took me to a “proper chippy” for fish and chips.

Barrel racing in the UK: A love story

Sally Heron puts her quarter horse, Joe, through his paces in a pen just outside her home. Her blond hair in a loose ponytail, her jeans snug on her hips and held up with a “world championships qualifier” belt buckle, she moves to the back of the 60 meter by 40 meter enclosure and poses for photos. Her fiancé, Ollie Crowder, whistles at Joe so his ears stand up.

A barrel-racing coach, Heron looks across the pen to her holding area, where members of her team prepare for today’s practice. They work on their horses’ feet, their manes, their saddles. The horses themselves munch on hay from inside bags hanging from a wood fence. Someone walks around with a scoop, picking up small messes before they become big ones, or well, big ones before they become massive.

A breeze pushes the unseasonably warm October air around as more riders arrive in trucks and trailers, having just navigated a road barely wide enough to handle them … and not nearly wide enough to handle them and another vehicle. City life, and the roads that make it possible, is just a rumor out here in the rolling green countryside.

It’s quiet except for the whispered encouragement between rider and horse. More riders pull in past a “Barrel Racing Drive” sign. They park and unload, greeting each other as they prepare for the day’s ride. Eventually 10 barrel racers, ranging in age from 13 to 55, mount up at Heron’s facility, which she calls 4 Strides Equestrian, after the four strides of a horse.

They have all converged on this secluded ranch for their twice-monthly practice, and a big one at that. This is the last time the team will be together before they fly to the NBHA Open and Senior World Championships in Georgia, which all of them see as important in their development as competitors in the sport they love.

“OK, guys,” Heron shouts, “get yourselves warmed up!”

All of this seems perfectly normal, if perhaps laced with pre-Georgia jitters.

Even with that anticipation, this scene plays out every day across the western United States.

Only 4 Strides Equestrian isn’t in the western United States.

It’s in England.

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It’s the first question people ask Sally Heron when they hear about 4 Strides: How did a woman who was born and raised in England and lived her whole life there turn teaching the very American sport of barrel racing into a career?

Her ready answer is that there is no ready answer, but rather a handful of them, intertwined and equally important, like ingredients in a soup. Start with the fact that she has been “horsey” her whole life. Throw in her passion for teaching, which has been her vocation, in various forms, throughout her career. Sprinkle in her degree in sport science. Mix in her relationship with Crowder, who, like her, has a fondness for traditional American interests.

All of that mixed together with opportunistic timing. She was invited to participate in the world championships in America in 2017, and she spent three weeks being trained to barrel race. When she returned to her home near Fulbeck, a three-hour drive north of London, she was energized and ready to introduce this American sport to horse-crazy England.

From that passion—and a simultaneous desire by Heron for a career change—4 Strides Equestrian was born. “I thought, I just need to apply myself to this sport. I think this can go places in the UK. Barrel racing for me then took off as a business,” she says. “I’ve grown it and grown it and grown it.”

As Heron says, the story of the birth of 4 Strides Equestrian—the only incorporated business in the UK specializing in barrel racing—has many threads. But there is one thread that binds all the rest of them together: love. The growth of 4 Strides Equestrian is at its core a love story, from Heron’s love for horses and teaching to the mutual love between Heron and her team members to her upcoming marriage to Crowder.

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At 55, Mark Dame is the elder statesman of the team, and like everybody else, a lifelong rider. He saw a barrel racing demonstration a few years ago and decided “to give it a go” (as the British say), just to “have a laugh” (same). He got much more than that. “I had the biggest smile on my face ever,” he said. “I said, ‘This is fantastic, I need to keep doing this.’”

His teammates tell similar stories. Their passion for the sport brought them to Heron. Their fondness for her brings them back. It doesn’t hurt that they’ve all gotten much faster, too.

After practice, Heron, Dame, the rest of the riders and their loved ones gather in a circle of lawn chairs for a very British break for tea and biscuits. It is here that their love of the sport, of the woman teaching it to them, and hers for them, becomes obvious. Laughter punctuates every story they tell, whether it is about triumph or failure, rides that were blazing or glacial, or trying to convince their snooty English riding friends that they don’t know what they are missing.

Many of Heron’s athletes drive several hours one way for the twice-monthly lessons. Part of the sport’s popularity, Heron says, is she can teach experienced riders to grasp barrel-riding basics quickly, and soon they start slicing big chunks off their times. They all want to have fun, of course, and they also all yearn to be great. Like their coach, they bring a competitive streak to every ride.

As important as Heron’s trip to Georgia in 2017 was for her barrel racing business, the fact she was invited and had not earned the right to be there doesn’t sit well with her. She looks back as if she didn’t belong in that tournament and wants to correct that. That’s why she’s proud that all 10 members of her team qualified to compete in the world championships near Atlanta last October. “We’ve worked hard to get them all there,” she says.

They don’t to be known as fast for British riders. They want to be known as fast, period.

“All of these guys started off wanting to break the 20-second barrier,” Heron says, waving her arm at the riders in the circle. “Then they broke the 19-second barrier. Then they broke the 18-second barrier. They’re all running between 17 and 18 seconds now. Eighteen months ago, you were all trying to achieve 20. Now you’re disappointed if you get 18. That comes with consistent training and muscle memory.”

Everyone in the circle nods in agreement.

Proof of their improvement came at the NBHA Open and Senior World Championships, where all of them set personal bests, several clocked times in the 16s, and two of them, Anna Turner and Dame, qualified for the finals in their respective divisions. Their smiles were as enormous as the belt buckles they won for those achievements.

But that improvement didn’t come easily. They worked hard for it.

Dame used the term “wenglish” to describe a riding style that combines western and English riding. Indeed, the barrel racers and their horses had to unlearn habits that work for English riding but not for barrel racing.

So much is different—from the boots and hats to the saddles, stirrups and spurs. English riding is more serious, more reliant on technique, and it matters how you look as you’re doing it. Barrel racing by comparison is a mad dash—if you’re not dirty, you’re not trying—and the only thing that matters is the time. It’s the difference between a proper Englishman drinking tea with his pinkie out and a dust-covered cowboy slugging a shot and slamming the glass onto the bar. Even simple verbal commands—telling the horse what to do—are more common in barrel racing than English riding.

Some of the adjustments they have had to make are obvious. Hannah Woodward comes from polo and fought the urge while learning to barrel race to raise her right arm and swing it as if she’s trying to hit the ball. When she did that, Heron shouted, “put it in your pocket!” Her horse, too, had to get over a tendency to want to run through the barrel instead of around it.

While competing in Malta on a horse trained in barrel racing, Dame gently lifted the reins, which on an English horse would have slowed it down. The western-trained horse screeched to a halt, and Dame was confused. “What’s happening here?” he asked. A cowboy who was watching lifted his hat, and in a drawl, told Dame, “You put your brakes on, boy.”

Dame’s English-accented impression of a cowboy is priceless, and they all laugh like old friends when they hear it. But they’re not old friends … not yet, at least, but that’s just a matter of time. None of them knew each other before becoming teammates, and yet they have congealed into a cohesive unit.

Heron says she aimed to create an atmosphere that she herself needed—one built on love and support. “I wanted people to clap and cheer,” she says. “It’s just not the way we do things in England.”

But it is at 4 Strides, and that is what she is most proud of—that she has crafted a supportive team out of disparate pieces. That was never more obvious than in the team’s trip to America, where when they weren’t racing they were shopping together, driving together, eating together … and rescuing Dame together at 2 a.m. from a hotel room flooded by a burst pipe. “We spend weekend after weekend after weekend together,” Heron says. “There is never a cross word. It’s a really nice thing to do. We really enjoy each other’s company.”

Everyone in the circle nods again.

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One last love story. Sally and Ollie will get married in a Western-themed wedding with a barn dance. They make a great team. She loves American horse culture, he loves American sports and cars, including his Dodge pickup that sits near the pen. “We were born on the wrong side of the Atlantic,” he says.

Ollie says he knew Sally was the one when she told him everybody needs someone who will love them unconditionally, and she promised to be that person for him. At 4 Strides, they talk under a gray English sky, Ollie outside the pen, Sally inside. She brushes her hands gently along Joe’s bridle. It’s shiny and beautiful, thick with Svaroski crystals, and a very special gift from Ollie.

 “It came with a label on it that said, ‘Will you marry me?’” Heron says. “He said it’s more expensive than a ring, and I’ll get more use out of it.”

The smile on her face shows that would be true if they were in the western United States, here in England, or anywhere in between.