Another early morning Monday finish wraps-up this week’s action in the PBR.
While we saw the buckle’s won by 20-something-year-olds here in Australia, across the Pacific it was a different story with all three events across the weekend going to veteran Brazilian riders in North America.
Let’s take a look at what went down over the weekend.
2020 PBR Australia Monster Energy Tour
I had some technical difficulties across the weekend and with Facebook this morning, but my 2020 Mackay Invitational wrap up is up and live on the website.
You can read about the wins of Lane Mellers and Kurt Shephard in the link below.
Mellers and Shephard triumphant in Mackay.
As I mentioned in my full wrap up of the events in Mackay, the scores that went the way of the bulls (and riders on some occasions) seemed to be lower than we normally see awarded for a pen of this calibre.
I went back and watched the replays of both events on RidePass earlier this afternoon. I think that while the warm weather and arena surface played their part in the low scores, the judges appeared to hold the pen to a higher expectation than at previous stops.
The average bull scores came in at 40.72 points for Event 1 and 40.71 points for Event 2.
Those marks are the lowest and second lowest that we have seen at a PBR Australia Monster Energy Tour stop held in Queensland or New South Wales in the five years of events that I have put into my personal database.
In fact, there are just two MET events that have a lower average during that period, and they were in 2017 at Adelaide (40.30) and 2016 at Melbourne (40.60).
At the previous two MET stops in Mackay in 2018 and 2019, the average bull scores were 41.51 and 42.31 points respectively. So we are looking at an average drop of about 1.2 points.
2019 PBR Australia Bucking Bull of the Year POA Fully Locked & Loaded was the best of the bovines across the two events. The Dittmann Bucking Bulls‘ bucker posted a 42-point trip in Event 1 when he won his rematch with Brady Fielder in 5.42 second and then 43-points in the second event when he beat Aaron Kleier in 3.66 seconds.
After combining with Kurt Shephard for 85.5 points during the Event 2 Short-Go, Wallace Bucking Bulls‘ Black Tuxedo joined six other bulls that have carried riders to a PBR Australia-high of 3 round wins across the 2019 and 2020 seasons.
Ok, enough about the bulls… Let’s focus in on the cowboys.
In both events at Mackay on Saturday, we saw an identical 8-for-38 result for the cowboys, which is 3 rides less per event than we saw last weekend in Bundaberg.
That makes the average qualified ride rate at 21.05% which puts it just below the season average of 22.54%.
That average ride score for Event 1 came in at 0.8 points below the 2020 mark of 82.46 points while Event 2 finished 0.1 points above.
Let’s move on and take a look at the 2020 PBR Australian National Standings.
Lachlan Richardson increased his total points to 334 points and he remains out in front. At Mackay, the Gresford cowboy increased his lead over Clermont’s Aaron Kleier by a further 14 points with the gap now sitting at 58 points.
Mount Isa’s Jake Curr jumped up two spots into third place in the standings on 148.5 points after putting together another strong finish in Event 1, while Mareeba’s Kurt Shephard used his Event 2 win to leap up fourteen places into fourth with 120.5 points.
Heywood’s Sam Woodall continues to climb up the standings and now rounds out the Top-5 on 116 points.
But this weekend’s big mover was Mundubbera’s Lane Mellers who bounded all the way up to eighth place from the back of the pack. Thanks to his Event 1 win, Mellers now has 89 points and is the last of the riders within 250-points of the No. 1 ranked Richardson.
2020 PBR Unleash the Beast Tour
Silvano Alves wound the clock back with a 3-for-3 performance to take the win in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The 32-year-old Brazilian pushed his way into the Top-25 on the World Standings with an aggregate total of 256.25 points.
He held off Cooper Davis, Marco Eguchi and JB Mauney to win his first Premier Series buckle since 2016.
There were no major changes at the top of the 2020 PBR World Standings.
Aussie’s Aaron Kleier and Lachlan Richardson are ranked 28th and 31st .
2020 PBR Velocity Tour
It wasn’t a good weekend for Mackay’s Ky Hamilton who battled through some sub-par draws across the two events in Casper, Wyoming to finish 0-for-2.
A pair of Brazilian veterans took the wins with 34-year-old Andre da Cruz de Souza winning on Night 1 and 41-year-old Valdiron de Oliveira winning on Night 2.
Checkout all of the official results on the PBR’s website.
Stay tuned to Ride The Rage for full coverage of this week’s PBR action.