"If you're in perfect timing with a bronco," says Bill Linderman, 33, the champion All-Around Cowboy of the U.S., "it's no more strain than rowing a boat." Before keen-eyed rodeo fans in San Antonio last week, Champion Linderman gave a demonstration.
His mount, an untamed sorrel, exploded from the rodeo chute, rearing and chopping at the air, twisting its body with a whiplike motion, then settled down to a series of earth-pounding bucks. Champion Bill Linderman gripped with his thighs, with practiced nonchalance raked the sorrel's sides with his spurs, timing the raking motion to match the rhythm ot the bucks. All the while, Linderman kept his eyes on the sorrel's ears−whose turnings often tip off the next plunge.
After eight seconds of this, the timer sounded his horn. Other cowboys closed in on the bucking sorrel, grabbed the halter and gave rangy (6 ft., 180 Ibs.) Bill Linderman a chance to swing safely to the ground. From the rodeo crowd came the happy hooting and hollering of people who know a good ride when they see one.
Linderman, who was born in Bridger, Mont., won his cowboy championship title by spending eleven months or so last year on a 75,000-mile rodeo-circuit tour and winning more prize money ($33,674) than any other rodeo man in the combined events: saddle bronc riding, steer wrestling, bareback riding and calf roping. The San Antonio rodeo was Linderman's fifth of the young 1954 season, after performances at Denver, Fort Worth, Houston and El Paso. This week he pushes to Baton Rouge. His prize money for the year so far: more than $6.000.
Last year Linderman won the title of All-Around Cowboy champion for the third time. His winnings reflect the postwar rise of rodeo from a sporadic local show to a nationwide (Boston to San Francisco) sport witnessed by some 20 million people last year at nearly 600 rodeos. In his 14-year career, Linderman has also collected some spectacular bruises, e.g., a fractured skull at Pueblo, Colo. (1943), a broken neck and back at Deadwood, S. Dak. (1946), not to mention a broken hand in New York City, and a broken leg at Lewistown, Mont.
"Rodeoing," says Linderman, "is about the only sport you can't fix. You'd have to talk to the bulls and horses, and they wouldn't understand you."