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Almost a year ago, Samantha Gibson was going through a rough patch.

“I didn’t really know where I was going with myself,” says the 26-year-old who lives in Chesterville, about 45 minutes south of Ottawa. “I didn’t really have any sort of outlet to feel like I could be empowered, to be a confident person again.”

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Gibson did find an outlet, even if it  was something that her mother initially wrote off as “insane.”

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Since the spring of 2023, Gibson has joined the ranks of North America’s female bull riders. We’re not talking about mechanical bulls, but rather flesh-and-blood beasts at rodeos that can weigh more than 2,000 pounds and which are bred to buck their riders within a hoof’s-fall of serious injury.

“It was my crazy journey of feminine self-discovery,” Gibson says of bull riding.

That journey is to hit a new milestone later in March, when Gibson travels to Beaumont, Texas, for the Elite Lady Bull Riders World Finals on March 20-24. Just two other Canadians, both from the Toronto area, have qualified along with her to compete in Texas.

“We’re hoping to do a clean sweep … We’re hoping we’re all coming home with medals,” Gibson says.

Gibson took up bull riding last spring after a male friend in Chesterville who formerly rode bulls suggested that the extreme sport might lift her out of her funk.

She took a weekend-long class in bull riding at County Xtreme Bulls in Picton. But, before that, Gibson, who had ridden many horses in her time, went to Crazy Horse Stonegrill Steakhouse and Saloon for her first ride on a mechanical bull.

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She freely admits that she fractured her knuckles on that inaugural experience. “That hurt. It’s actually still healing,” she says. “But it didn’t deter me.”

The friend who had recommended bull riding to Gibson had himself shattered a femur while riding a bull and had to be rushed to hospital due to internal bleeding, Gibson says.

“The cowboy way is you walk it off and you deal with it. You don’t really usually get medical attention unless you can’t stop them from helping you — that’s not good, not a good culture to have,” Gibson says.

Gibson, in fact, is a health care worker by day, which might seem odd given her own bull riding injuries. They include a fractured chest plate and multiple torn ligaments.

“I’ve been crushed. I’ve been stepped on. I need to get three surgeries off-season,” she says.

Even the rides that are injury-free can involve perilous, jarring dismounts. “There’s nothing similar to hitting the dirt after you’ve been bucked off. It’s a whole other ball game. Your body is like, ‘What is going on?’” Gibson says.

Gibson says she’s ridden too many bulls to keep track, after her maiden rides on bulls named Cupid and Old Red in Picton. She’s ridden perhaps 60 to 70 times — protected by a helmet and a shock-absorbent vest — over most weekends, especially last summer, often at rodeos and practices in New York state, but also as far as Georgia in February.

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She says she’s doesn’t ride for the adrenalin high.

“It’s more about how far I can push myself physically and mentally, how much fortitude I can apply to a situation,” she says.

“My goal is to get to a place where I can ride anything that’s in front of me and be consistent and be successful.”

She’s acquired a sponsor, the Hat Effect, a custom cowboy hat-making company in Cambridge, Ont., but says nobody gets rich riding bulls.

Jason Terpstra, owner of Country Xtreme Bulls, calls Gibson “a great girl,” adding that, because of her medical background, it’s “handy to have her around when you’re bucking bulls.”

Terpstra, a 49-year-old retired bull rider, says that with bull riding “a lot of it is about balance and not strength,” adding that, during an eight-second ride, a bucking bull can exert three Gs of force — gravitational force — comparable to being in a jet.

Terpstra calls Gibson “a decent rider” who is passionate, but needs more experience. “She needs to get on a lot more stock,” he says.

Gibson says some bull riders say the sport is 90 per cent mental and 10 per cent physical. She works out regularly with yoga and medicine balls.

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“A lot of it is about figuring out how to make your centre of gravity work for you,” she says. Raising her mental game is a matter of having confidence and belief in herself, she says.

“Tell your fear to shut up. Tell your brain it’s going to be fine,” she says. “Just stop yourself from giving in to that voice in your head that’s like, ‘This is crazy. You should stop doing this.’”

Gibson’s mother was initially skeptical of her pursuit. But she’s come around and is supportive. “She bought me my first pair of chaps,” Gibson says. Her mother also assists with Gibson’s travel costs and helps, as does Gibson’s ex-partner, with the care for Gibson’s two young children when Gibson travels to rodeos.

Gibson says her children know she rides bulls, and she’s shown them pictures and videos of her in action. “But they’ve never seen me live,” she says. “I’m 50-50 on it. Sometimes it can go really bad.”

Gibson says she’s experienced some sexism on the bull riding scene. “It’s just like anything else,” she says. “You could be the world champion and there’s still going to be people saying that women shouldn’t be doing it.”

The sport, she says, is “very male-dominated,” and women are very much a minority, riding in an open category with men when they are allowed to, or in women-only leagues.

Rather than become rivals, the women of bull riding are automatic friends, Gibson says.

“There being so few women in it, you have to be supportive of one another,” she says.

phum@postmedia.com

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