Bull riders are a superstitious bunch. Their pre-ride warm-up rituals range from wearing lucky clothes to chewing tobacco to praying. But what if some of them were trying to bend luck their way by, say, taking performance-enhancing drugs? Would you be surprised?

According to Cody Lambert, a retired champion bull rider and director of livestock for PBR, drugs are a non-issue in rodeo: “It’s really simple—we won’t allow it.” He pauses, and then adds, “But we haven’t had a testing program implemented for our riders.”

Therein lies the problem: With millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements are on the line, how can anyone claim that professional rodeo is drug-free, if the riders are not tested? It begs the question of which is stronger: the Cowboy Way or human predilection for greed and adulation? The PBR and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) explicitly prohibit cheating, but some rodeo athletes seriously doubt the sportsmanship of all the competitors.

“You see it for sure,” says steer wrestler Luke Branquinho, 30. “Have I seen guys with a needle in their butt? No. Have I seen someone at 190 pounds one week and 230 the next? Yes. It’s obvious they’re doping from the way they look.”

Naturally large enough that he says he’s never needed artificial help, Branquinho cracked out in 2000 and has rodeoed with hundred of guys. He’s been in and out of first place in the hunt for his third PRCA World Championship all season and will be competing at NFR in December. “I’m not going to name names, but I’ve seen the evidence, and not just in steer wrestling but in other events, too,” he says. “You hear people talk.”

Dr. Don Catlin, a pioneer in drug testing in sports and head of the nonprofit Anti-Doping Research, agrees: “I would be very surprised to hear that those guys are not using steroids. It’s a sport at risk.”

If performance-enhancing drugs don’t impact who takes home the trophy buckles and the cash prizes, it’s either a remarkable testament to the honesty of cowboys or a glaring oversight. But the sheer difficulty of the sport may negate the effect of cheaters.

“People self-out, because there are too many variables with livestock,” says Branquinho. “You can be the world’s strongest guy, but you won’t win if your animal doesn’t perform well. ... Drugs don’t affect world championships. Skill and using your brain have much more effect.”

Anabolic-androgen steroids were developed in the 1930s to treat things like delayed puberty and simulate testosterone to promote muscle growth. Swallow or inject a “cycle” of steroids, and you’re virtually guaranteed to bulk up your muscle mass. But these wonder drugs come with a caveat. Prolonged use brings a host of side effects, including baldness, aggression, liver cancer, heart attack, severe acne, and more.

After decades of sport scandal—most notably, in Olympic competition—Congress placed steroids on the list of drugs monitored by the Controlled Substances Act in 1991. That same year, Major League Baseball’s commissioner issued a memo to all teams listing banned substances, including steroids. Performance-enhancing drugs have since become a part of American sports lore from track’s Marion Jones to baseball’s Mark McGwire to football’s Lyle Alzado.

Flash forward two decades and nearly every professional sport has faced a steroid scandal—except rodeo.

“You could have a hidden epidemic,” says Dr. Gary Gaffney, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa’s college of medicine and founder of Steroid Nation, a blog devoted to news about performance enhancing drugs. “What do you do when you’ve reached your genetic potential? You push it.”

Brute strength may not win you rodeos, but quick recovery from injuries certainly helps you stay in the game. That’s where steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) treatments come in. HGH helps the body recover from injury and exertion and can speed up an injured athlete’s return to action. Rodeo competitors have no salary and do not get paid unless they ride. Rodeoing while hurt is the norm, and the motivation to recover fast is clear. Competitors have a small number of years to make money and receive nothing without saddling up and placing well.

No one contests that modern rodeo athletes spend more time in the gym than ever before. Lifting weights and building core muscles to create a powerful (if not bulky) body is no longer the exception.

“I think you have to have an overall fitness,” says Brendon Clark, a 30-year-old bull rider on the PBR tour. “The shoulders, arms, and groin muscles are what take most of the strain, but it is really important to be physically strong in every part of the body. I’ve played a lot of other sports that use one set of muscles. But when you ride bulls it seems like you use every single one of them.”

For just a few hundred dollars and ten minutes of Internet research, a rodeo athlete could set himself up with a month’s supply of drugs. For his part, Clark has nothing to hide: “I don’t think that anyone would have a problem with testing.” He also disagrees that riders would gain a competitive edge. “In our sport, it’s not about how strong you are, so taking drugs is not going to help you in any way. I can probably vouch and say that people have not even considered it.”

While steroids and HGH are often linked with images of oiled-up body-builders and massive homerun hitters, a leaner user has also emerged. Some professional cyclists build strength and decrease fat with a combination of exercise, high-protein diets, and doping. The tiresome cat-and-mouse game between dopers and the scientists hired to catch them is all too familiar, with heroes like cyclist Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador, this year’s Tour de France winner, again in the spotlight for doping allegations. Rodeo organizations, meanwhile, have chosen to look the other way.

“We have a conduct code in our rules that anything that is detrimental to the sport and professionalism of the PBR is dealt with on a case-by-case basis,” PBR’s Lambert says.
“We would consider performance enhancing drugs to be a major infraction.”

The PRCA also has a cheating policy but does not test its athletes—human or animal. “We think that trying to gain an advantage pharmacologically is wrong,” says Matthew Barnett, an attorney and the PRCA’s deputy commissioner. Before hiring on full-time with the PRCA this year, Barnett worked with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and helped prosecute cyclist Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France victory for doping. Obviously no babe in the woods when it comes to doping, Barnett claims that he has never received any reports of steroid use in rodeo.

A comprehensive year-round testing policy would be extremely expensive for a membership-based organization like the PRCA, explains Barnett. And he adds that, “A lot of people doing this sport are part-time guys who are working jobs.” For most competitors, the motivation and resources to cheat are beyond them.

According to Anti-Doping Research’s Dr. Don Catlin, each test can cost hundreds of dollars. The pro rodeo circuit has hundreds of rodeos and athletes across the country. Should a system of testing be implemented, Catlin says that an organization could control costs by limiting the scope of the tests by choosing which drugs to focus on. For example, an HGH blood test is expensive and only identifies the drug if it was taken within the last 48 hours; testing for steroids, though, is much easier and cheaper, often requiring only a urine sample.

Catlin is also the chairman of the Equine Drug Research Institute and has seen plenty of animal doping outside of thoroughbred racing. He has tested bulls, horses, cows, and even sheep. “There is lots of information about how 4-H clubs and nice little 14-year-old girls have steroids in their animals,” he says. “With human sports, [performance-enhancing drugs] got so out-of-control that they got into other sports. Sports people have been running around trying to plug the leaks for the last ten years.”

Empty syringes were found outside a bullpen at the 2004 PBR World Finals, and serious suspicions of steroid use were raised. In 2008, amidst new rumors, PBR launched a drug test protocol for detecting anabolic steroids in bulls.

“We tested the top bulls at several events,” says PBR’s Lambert. “We did testing for over a year and did not come up with a positive test.” PBR insists that the allegations never spilled from the pen to the riders.

“We’ve never had any information where anyone asked us about riders doing it,” Lambert continues. “The PBR is built by guys who rode and were the top bull riders of their time. That sort of thing didn’t happen in bull riding.”

Tuff Hedeman—the three-time PRCA and one-time PBR bull riding champion—is not so sure. “The reality is that if people think that something could help them, they probably would,” he says. “HGH wouldn’t surprise me. If a guy can recover from an injury in three weeks instead of six, I’m sure that [doping] would cross his mind—especially if it’s not against the law. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

Dale Yerigan, the general manager of the International Professional Rodeo Association (IPRA), wrestled steers for 25 years and earned 11 IPRA world championships. He scoffs at the benefits of steroid use in rodeo. “You have to maintain a lot of flexibility,” says Yerigan. “If not, you’re too stiff and in some events, you’re more likely to get injured.” Or score poorly.

“I think rodeo has done a fairly good job of self-policing,” says Yerigan, who once competed in more than a 100 rodeos a year. “You don’t get paid to show up. You need to win.” The IPRA does not have a drug testing policy.

For what it’s worth, former attorney and former PRCA commissioner Troy Ellerman served jail time for leaking confidential testimony when representing Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) vice president James Valente as that firm was investigated for allegedly selling performance enhancing drugs to professional athletes, including Barry Bonds. Without Ellerman, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams probably don’t write the whistle-blower book Game of Shadows, which helped expose steroid use in baseball and re-launched discussions about the ethics of performance-enhancing drugs in all sports.

Doping may be against cowboy culture, but the temptation to cheat for personal gain is certainly there. Until rodeo organizations test riders for these drugs, no one can be certain whether doping is, or is not, a part of the sport. Meanwhile, we have each rider’s good word, and perhaps that is enough.

“It’s not a cowboy thing to do,” says PBR rider Brendon Clark. “You’re competing against a wild animal, and you can try all the tricks you want. It doesn’t matter.”
Luke Branquinho sums up the cowboy spirit best: “If I’d have to take drugs to compete, I’d rather just stay home with my family.” Hedeman agrees: “Give Babe Ruth a hot dog and a beer, and he’d go out and hit you a couple of home runs.”