He is one of the best bull riders in Canada, but Scott Schiffner has had better nights.
"I kind of messed up that one for sure," he says late Thursday at the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
A few minutes earlier, Schiffner was thrashed around by an enraged bovine for eight seconds. The evening ended with him in eighth place. He broke no bones, which is a victory.
At 36, he is the oldest among a dozen bull riders at the national championships. The youngest, Lonnie West, was 5 in 2001, when Schiffner won his first title.
Over the years, he has fractured femurs, tibias and fibulas, torn biceps and knee cartilage, and received too many bumps, bruises and stitches than can be counted.
"It is part of the game at this level," says Schiffner, a bull rider for more than half his life. "I don't talk about it much. It's a loser's excuse."
Three weeks ago, he separated his left shoulder. It hurts like the dickens, but not enough to make him skip the Canadian Finals Rodeo. On Thursday, 12,000 spectators jammed the Oilers' old rink in Edmonton.
"Pain is temporary," Schiffner says. "Records and fame last a long time."
There is prize money to be won on the rodeo circuit, but only a rare few earn enough to make a living.
"I know I am never not going to be able to work from the monetary value that I derive from this, but it is what I am," Schiffner says. When he was 10, he began riding steers for fun on his family's farm east of Calgary. "It is the only blue-collar professional sport in the world."
A cowboy's body is often battered, but the spirit is unceasing. That is a big part of the attraction of it. To most sports fans, rodeo performers' names are unfamiliar. They sound more like country singers than athletes: Dakota Buttar, Brock Radford and Jordan Hansen are all competing here.
Yet over the weekend more than 90,000 people will pour through the doors at Rexall Place and at the convention centre across the street during a concurrent international farm fair.
It's a five-day celebration of western heritage that funnels an estimated $50-million into the economy. There are bloodstock sales and purebred beef shows and there is a showcase for cattle that are bathed and have their hair teased after being blown with devices that look like they belong in a car wash.
"These cows are pretty pampered," Doug Roxburgh says as he combs Miss Legend, a 734-pound calf with a sweet disposition. "Once they build a trust with you, they'll let you do just about anything.
"It sounds silly, but it is almost like they know they are on display."
A year ago, when she was 16, Halley Adams won a 2016 half-ton pickup truck for fielding the supreme-champion female, a one-ton red Angus named Zaria.
"It's something my family has been working for, for years," the grade 12 student from tiny Forestburg, Alta., says. "It was like a dream come true for me."
In the exhibition halls around them, volunteers carry pitchforks and shovels and watch their step while keeping an eye out for ample droppings. At a country market, alfalfa products and equine supplements are peddled beside bejewelled boots and cowboys hats and horseshoeing tools.
On the sidewalk out front, amid squeals of laughter, three pre-teen boys are practising their roping skills by lassoing one another.
"This is real life Alberta, and for rural people to come to Edmonton and drive their business is important," says Tim Reid, the president and chief executive of the Northlands, the non-profit organization that runs the coliseum. "This is one of the things that is unique to us."
The rodeo, of course, is the biggest draw. After spending the day at the convention centre, exhibitors use an overhead sidewalk to cross a busy city thoroughfare and take their seats.
There is dirt on the floor of the arena the Oilers called home for 42 years before moving to a new $480-million venue this fall. The old building's future is still being debated, but the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association has announced it is returning to Edmonton for two more years. The finals have been held at the coliseum every year since 1974.
"We have been coming here for so long it feels like it belongs," says Jeff Robson, the rodeo association's general manager. "They go together like peanut butter and jelly."
The finals include a number of athletes who compete part time. A bareback rider from the suburbs of Edmonton, Kody Lamb is pursuing a degree in psychology in Texas at Tarleton State University. Clint Buhler, a steer roper, is a homicide detective in Calgary. When she isn't barrel racing, Sydney Daines is a goal-scoring striker on the University of Alberta's women's soccer team.
Daines, 20, is competing in her second national championships on her horse, Flame, which was born and raised on her family's farm in Red Deer.
"When I got the horse I had no choice but to end up doing this," says Daines, whose mother, Cheryl, was a barrel racer and father, Duane, was a saddle bronc rider who lost the use of his legs in a rodeo injury. "He has been great horse since Day 1. He is a fire-breathing dragon."
Rider Lane Cust picks up his hat after his ride during the Canadian Finals Rodeo in Edmonton Alberta, on Nov. 10.
JASON FRANSON/For the Globe and Mail
On Thursday night, the seats were filled in all but the farthest corners at Rexall Place. Chutes were set up for bucking broncos and bulls at what was once one end of the ice. The unmistakable aroma of livestock filled the air.
Behind the scenes, cowboys prepared for the competition; the steer wrestlers are all men the size of linebackers. Bulls stared indifferently from their pens at passers-by. One minute they are impassive animals, the next they are terrifying one-ton vehicles of aggression.
"There are a couple of them that are so calm that you can probably go over and scratch them," says Hansen, a 23-year-old bull rider competing at the Canadian Finals Rodeo for the fourth time. "But when they get into the chute they are entirely different.
"They are competitive, just like us."
The son of a former barrel racer, Hansen is seated in an interview area set up in the former dressing room of the Oil Kings, the Oilers' affiliate in the WHL. In one place, an autographed note from Wayne Gretzky to the minor-league players still hangs on the wall.
Hansen has just finished in fifth place for the night. He wears a black cowboy hat and is genial, despite having a bag of ice taped to his left shoulder.
For the required eight seconds, he had been tethered to a bull, his body lurching around with one hand in the air.
"Some guys like to skydive, others players play hockey," he says. "None of us do this for the money. We do it because we love it."
He went into the Canadian Finals Rodeo having won two events on the circuit this season and having accumulated a little more than $26,000 in prize money.
"I would still do it, even if I had to do it for free," he says.
He complains he feels a little rusty. This is his first competition in more than three months.
During the last one, he shattered his left ankle in Cheyenne, Wyo.
"A bull crashed down on me and the impact was so severe that it drove my left foot down into the ground," he says.
He needed surgery, but is back on the bulls now with three plates and 10 screws in his left foot.
"The hardest part for me was taking a long break," he says. "It is just what I do. When I was in the chute tonight I was a little scared for a second that the bull might lean on me.
"But after that I was more in the moment."
With a polite nod, he excuses himself for the night and heads down the hallway. As he walks, his spurs jingle jangle jingle.