Franks gets rank to finish sixth

By Ted Harbin, TwisTed Rodeo

LAS VEGAS – Bareback rider Cole Franks stretched his right hand, rolled his neck around and winced.

It looked like he’d just been in a fist fight. Whether he’d won is still up in the air. There was victory, as much as one can have when he tangles with 1,200 of wild, bucking flesh, but there was that look.

Franks had just packed a whale of a punch on Rosser Rodeo’s Right On Q for 83.75 points. It was good enough for sixth place in Thursday’s eighth round of the National Finals Rodeo and picked up $5,914. He might need that for an ice bath.

“I feel very glad that the next two horses I’m getting on are going to be fun,” said Franks, a four-time NFR qualifier from Clarendon, Texas. “It should be fun, so hopefully it is.”

ProRodeo’s premier championship is a slugfest for bareback riders. They are challenged by a variety of bucking horses, from the “hoppers,” the easiest to ride, to the “eliminators,” which is self-descriptive. Right On Q was part of the latter. The powerful, red explosive device was anything but fun.

“That horse was a little bit more than I expected,” Franks said. “I knew it was going to be hard, and I knew it was going to buck. I’m not really sure what happened, but I got set up right at the start, and he stepped ahead a little bit and hit me in the back of the head pretty hard, and it kind of rang my bell. I was just fighting the whole rest of the time, trying to stay caught up with him.

“I pretty much dropped the ball a little bit again tonight.”

The goal is to spur from in front of the horse’s shoulders and back to the rigging, then extend the feet back to the front before the bronc’s front feet hit the ground again. Judges are going to mark half the score based on how well the animal performs, and the other half on how well the cowboy spurs in rhythm with the horse’s bucking motion.

The tougher the bronc, the harder it is to do that. Still, Franks has ridden seven horses for a cumulative 676.75 points and is fourth in the average race. He has amassed $63,426 in eight rounds and sits sixth in the world standings with $256,787. Money for placing in the aggregate will be added Saturday night; as it stands, he has potential to add $44,356 to his pockets.

But this has been a rather slow NFR compared to his three previous. A year ago, he earned more than $156,000 over 10 nights.

“It’s not what I’m used to, but it’s adding up,” Franks said. “I mean once that average sinks in, it’ll be close and will even out a little bit. Hopefully the next two rounds will be $37,000 a night.”

Go-round winners earn $36,668, so he still has a chance at more than $73,000 in round money along with his average payout. It’s a big opportunity to cash out big in Vegas.