The bull rider’s mother says a prayer. She shuts out the surrounding noise — the fireworks, Pitbull on the sound system, the announcer yelling,

It’s buuuuuuuuuuuullllll riding time!

Twenty-two rows below, Jennifer Kimzey’s eldest son, Sage Steele Kimzey, walks out of the tunnel at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. He wears purple-and-black chaps, a crisp Wrangler shirt, and his lucky hat and boots, worn through in the toe. His 135-pound frame looks impossibly small from here. She focuses on the words emblazoned on the silver bracelet on her wrist: let your faith be bigger than your fear .

Sage Kimzey’s mother, Jennifer, watches from the stands.

Behind her, a 9-year-old fan from Florida named Bryce solemnly holds up a kimzey poster. Bryce thinks that he might be a bull rider one day, and he keeps glancing at Jennifer. The proximity to his hero’s mom is intoxicating. Nearby are the doctor who delivered Sage 20 years ago and a tall rodeo queen clad in a leather dress cut to the thigh. Pouring a Monster energy drink over ice with long, delicate fingers, she says that she once danced with Sage at the Pendleton Round-Up, Oregon’s legendary rodeo. Jennifer’s ex-husband and Sage’s father, Ted, is down in the fifth row, right above the dirt, a place of honor he’s owned since his days as a professional rodeo clown.

All are here to see history. Tonight at the National Finals Rodeo ( nfr ), the Super Bowl for America’s original extreme sport, Sage can clinch the gold buckle in bull riding. Doing so would make him the youngest Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association ( prca ) world champion in more than 50 years. Depending on how much money he takes home, he might also win a new Dodge Ram, which would be nice. To observers, the coronation seems a foregone conclusion. Over the past 12 months, Kimzey has set a rookie record by winning more than $130,000 on the prca circuit. His nearest competitor is tens of thousands of dollars behind him. So far at the finals, Kimzey has been similarly dominant, bucking off just once in seven bulls. He’s running away with this thing, as the announcer continually reminds the crowd of 19,000. But Jennifer knows there are no guarantees in this sport. Tonight Sage is on Guns & Donuts, a North Dakotan bull that usually goes right, but not always. The animal is roughly 11 times bigger than her son. She prays: “Lord, please grant whatever he is praying for right now.”

J.W. Harris, before a ride that will knock him down hard

The first rider is the defending champion, a bearded Texan named J.W. Harris. At 28, Harris has screws and pins in his head as a result of his chosen profession. One year he estimated he’d had five or six concussions in a single season. But he hasn’t worn a helmet as of late; he’s back in the more traditional cowboy hat. He nods his head, the chute opens, and he raises his hand skyward. He’s on for the bull’s first few frenetic kicks, and then something goes wrong.

Harris tumbles to the dirt, but his right wrist doesn’t disentangle from the bull rope. He’s caught, dragging alongside the animal. The bull launches into the air, taking Harris’s body along with it. Three bullfighters, who have the unenviable job of intervening between angry animal and downed rider, attempt to unhook Harris’s hand. They can’t. Once, twice, and three times he rag-dolls, his head jerking forward and back as the bull bucks. A hard silence settles across the arena. Harris manages to free his hand, then falls back. He’s lying supine on the ground when the bull turns on him. The head comes first. This is the worst-looking part of a bull attack — the driving horns — but it’s not the most dangerous. That comes next, when the bull stomps on Harris. Over and over hooves pound his body and head. The rodeo queen says, “Oh, no, that’s bad. Oh, no.” Jennifer Kimzey lowers her face into her hands. The bullfighters throw themselves at the animal; it shakes its head and rushes out of the arena. Bryce, in his 9-year-old wisdom, says, “I’ve seen worse. Way worse.”

Somehow, Harris stands, blood on his face. The crowd roars as he limps off. In the locker room, trainers will examine his head to make sure no internal metal has been disturbed; someone else will propose a shot of whiskey. Out in the arena, the show goes on. Fireworks, heavy metal, eight-second rides.

Ty Wallace, who broke his arm earlier in the week, getting ready to ride in round eight

A young Coloradan named Ty Wallace comes out of the chute, his right arm appearing stiff as it jerks through the air. It’s fractured, the work of a bull named Hang ’Em High that took him to the ground last night. Wallace stays on for eight seconds, scoring 85 out of 100 possible points. If the score holds up, he’ll win nearly $19,000. But in bull riding, the best rider goes last, and tonight, as it has for so many nights this year, that honor goes to the 20-year-old kid from Strong City, Oklahoma.

Kimzey straps on his black helmet, squats, then springs up and down, violently slapping his chaps and shoulders in a sort of ritual dance. He hops over the chutes and onto Guns & Donuts, then rubs his glove hand up and down on the rope to work in rosin and Neutrogena soap, a tacky mixture to improve his grip. Bryce screams. The rodeo queen claps. Jennifer’s right leg jackhammers up and down, and she fans her face with a sign bearing her son’s name. Sage nods his head, and the chute opens.