Happy trailsRelief, regret and retirement: Murray (Part 4 of 4) |
 |
They will surely be missed among the Top 45 standings, but no one rider is bigger or greater than the sport. Another generation of young riders is sure to come along and define the next era of professional bull riding.
In any case, it’s difficult for either Moraes – who’s had an entire season to prepare for this moment – or McBride – who only recently announced his plan to retire – to know what it will feel like Sunday afternoon when they hear the 8-second whistle one last time.
With that said, www.pbrnow.com caught up with four legends – Michael Gaffney, Cody Lambert, Jerome Robinson and Ty Murray – to find out what that moment felt like for them. In the fourth of a four-part series Murray talks about the finality of the decision to retire.
In his own words, this is Ty Murray’s story…
“At the end of the ’01 season, I thought, ‘I’m ready to retire.’ But it’s such serious decision that, for me, I was never, no matter what, under any circumstance going to be a guy who retired and came back.
“I’ve never seen it work. I’ve never seen it do anything but bring a guy’s legacy (or whatever you want to call it) down, in my eyes.
“You see it with boxers all the time. You even saw it with the greatest sportsman of all time, Michael Jordan. We even saw it with him. He was still pretty good, but he wasn’t even a shade of what he was before.
“I wanted to be dead sure that I wanted to retire.
“My whole career I knew that I wanted to retire before I was the guy who people said he should have retired last year or he should have retired a long time ago. I made that promise to myself, because you know at a young age that this isn’t a sport you do for a long time—‘til you’re 65 and you get a retirement package and a gold watch.
“But throughout my whole career the way I thought it would happen was that my ability would start to wane. In reality, the way it worked out was my drive and that feeling it’s above everything else and it’s all I can think about every day—that left.
“When a young kid comes and says he wants to be a bull rider you say, ‘Do you want it more than anything in the world? Do you think about it every day and every night without trying to? If you don’t then it’s the wrong sport because it’s too dangerous.’
“That’s how it got for me. After I broke the record for the most all-around titles, and then after riding so many years in the PBR I just got to a point where I didn’t want to leave the ranch, and I started thinking about other things. Days would go by and I wouldn’t even think about bull riding.
“I used from the beginning of the ’02 season until May, and I was in Billings, Mont., and my hand was sore. My hand was really, really sore – my riding hand – and I got on this little black bull and he came out, my hand was killing me and he bucked me off about, I don’t know, in about three or four jumps.
“It was just pathetic. And I was sitting there in the locker room there in Billings thinking, ‘What am I still doing here?’
“I didn’t feel like it was burning in me like it was my whole career. I just thought, ‘What am I doing here? I’ve done what I want to do.’ I was able to do things smart enough or lucky enough with my money – I paid attention to that my whole career – and I didn’t have a reason to stay. I didn’t have a reason to keep riding and I didn’t have the drive, the focus and the intensity that I always had.
“I thought you need to take your own advice. I’m four months in and I’ve been thinking about this, so I said, ‘You need to retire.’ I called Randy (Bernard) and I said, ‘I’m going to retire.’ He said, ‘Are you going to retire at the end of the year?’ I said, ‘No, I’m retired right now.’ ‘Retire at the end of the year.’ I said, ‘No, it’s too dangerous. I’ve moved on. I’m done.’
“For me it would have been hard to say I’m going to retire at the end of the year and my heart ain’t in it. It’s not like its baseball where the worst that’s going to happen is you’re going to lose. This sport – you can die or be in a wheelchair. There’s no telling what can happen if your heart and soul ain’t in it, if you’re not living it, eating it, thinking it, sleeping it.
“He begged me. And I said, ‘No, I’m done. Right now I’m no longer a bull rider.’ And that was it for me. It wasn’t played out. There wasn’t a plan.
“I don’t think things changed that much because I was sure. I remember Jim Shoulders, at the time, when he found out he called me and he said, ‘You ain’t gonna retire.’
“Everybody still thought I was young and I was still in good shape and physically I could still go do it. So it came as a shock to a lot of people. Jim Shoulders said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to retire. I’ve seen a million guys retire.’ He said he watched Casey Tibbs retire five times.
“I said, ‘Jim, I’m retired. I can guarantee you that I ain’t gonna make a comeback. I can guarantee you.’ It wasn’t until a couple years later that I said, ‘Do you believe me yet?’ He just kind of smiled.
“When I told Randy that I was retiring and I told my mom and dad and Jewel – me and Jewel had talked about it a little bit – it wasn’t ‘I hope this is the right decision’ or ‘I’m thinking that this is the right decision.’ I was done. I was retired. I knew it was the right decision. I knew I’d never want to come back.
“It was weird because as driven as I was and as much as I loved it – it was everything, it was the only thing I was, the only thing I did – and it just went away. It was all of a sudden one day it was gone and it never came back.
“Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago to me. Sometimes I watch these young guys I think, ‘I can’t imagine what would make you want to do this.’ It’s weird and it’s hard to explain. I watched Brian Canter get stomped in Paso Robles, (Calif., at an ESPN Team Shootout) and I think, “Jesus, what—”
“I have friends that would give anything to be 18 again or to go back and be 21 again and be riding and be out there. I don’t feel that. I’m glad where my life is. Being 39 years old feels great to me. I’m happy with where I’m at and where my life’s going and I wouldn’t go back if I could.
“If somebody, right now, could touch me with wand and go, ‘You’re 18 again, the PBR is rolling and boom you’re 18 and get to ride.’ I’d say, ‘Really, I’m not interested.’”
—by Keith Ryan Cartwright
