In The Saddle With Pro Bronc Rider Emily Collits

 

Emily Collits is the unexpected international champion bronc rider who is changing the face of rodeo sports in Australia.

Emily Collits is at the vanguard of a new generation of young women proving their mettle in the traditionally male-dominated arena of bronc riding. Having hung up her spurs as a rider, Emily is now one of the sport’s fiercest advocates as the Director of the Women’s Ranch Bronc Championships (WRBC) in Australia.

“There were women riding broncs, but they were riding with blokes, bull riding and stuff like that, but women didn’t have their own event,” Emily explains.

“They created that event over here, then I got approached by Daryl McElroy in the States – he runs the Women’s Ranch Bronc Championships – and he asked me to come over. I jumped on the American circuit, and it was even more addictive.”

Emily grew up and still lives in Moggill, a semi-rural suburb of southwestern Brisbane, where busy city streets and cramped suburban lots give way to tree-lined roads and sprawling acreage set against a backdrop of rolling hills.

“It’s been pretty good because you’re not too far away from the city, you’re only about an hour from the city and then it’s still semi-rural so I got to grow up having horses and still not being too far away from everything. You kind of have everything at your fingertips.”

It was here Emily’s lifelong passion for horses began.

“I begged my parents about horses for years and years, and they sent me out to a place at Pullenvale and made me pick up horse shit basically for a few years before they finally gave in,” Emily says.

“I used to ride English, so I rode at the Moggill & Brookfield Pony Club growing up in school. Then I moved to Canada for a few years and got into the western riding and exposed to rodeo. I came home and worked on a couple of big stations up in North Queensland and South Australia and fell into the bronc riding from there.”

It’s a big leap for any stretch of the imagination from dressage and showjumping to enduring eight terrifying seconds of thrashing hell atop a wild, bucking bronc. What began as a personal challenge quickly became an addictive thrill ride for Emily.

“I was living in Longreach at the time, and someone made the mistake of saying: ‘that’s not a girl’s sport, girls don’t ride rough stuff,” Emily says.

“So, I was like oh yeah, right-o, I’ll show you. I’ll give it a go.’ I saw there was a school on and signed up, then the rest is basically history. It was meant to be just a one-time ‘I told you so, I could do this’ but ignited a spark in me and I kept wanting more.

“It’s not you against another person, it’s you against a horse and you’re trying to match this animal that’s got its own will. It’s an athlete in its own way; they’re just as much of an athlete as we are. It became a me versus me sort of deal and I wanted to match these horses as best as I could.

“You have to train your mind just as much as your body and be confident in what you can do. Confident like, ‘I’m going to ride this thing to the ground, he’s got nothing on me’. You have to believe in yourself mentally just as much as you do physically.”

From the outer Brisbane suburbs to vast stations in the outback Australia and deep into the American heartland of rodeo, Emily’s life story reads like a true Western epic.

And like all Westerns, there is a villain, the one beast Emily could never tame and remains the bane of her existence.

“His name is Chromezilla,” Emily says.

“This horse was definitely my white whale. I’ve ridden him twice now and never made the buzzer on him. The first time I drew him was in Montana. He was new to the pen and was coming through. I really wanted to have a go, I was like: ‘he doesn’t look that strong.’ I’d seen him buck off two or three girls and I was like, yes, my turn finally.

“This thing somersaulted me over his head and I landed on my head, and I had never been bucked off so hard in all my life. I later found out I fractured the head of my femur during that ride.

“He’s actually the last horse I rode at the world finals last year. I pulled him and was in a ball of tears. He’s what we call a ‘bounty horse’, so he’s never been ridden and if you ride him, you’ll win the rodeo, basically. I think I lasted two seconds before I got somersaulted over his head and he knocked me out in the middle of the arena,” she laughs.

Emily’s passionate dedication to the sport of bronc riding makes her a leading example for incoming female riders. Having retired from pro bronc riding last year due to injury, Emily has shifted her focus outside of the arena to creating pathways for young women in the sport and promoting a national Australian circuit comparable to those in America.

“It has a lot of potential and there are a lot of girls interested but we’re going through all the loopholes of getting it registered, getting it inducted into the rules,” she says.

“We’re doing the groundwork to hopefully have a really big and bright future because you don’t really see girls getting on horses that don’t want them on their back, but there are girls out there who want to do it. And the crowd loves it.

“When you hear there’s going to be six girls getting on bucking horse at the rodeo, the crowd wants to see that. It’s definitely not an everyday thing so I think when it does take off more it’s definitely going to be a crowd pleaser.

“These girls are tough! I’ve seen them hit the ground hard and they get up; there’s dirt all through their teeth and they are still smiling and waving at the crowd. I think they are almost tougher than some of the blokes some days.”

The cowboys of the Old West called it ‘true grit’, astronauts call it ‘the right stuff’ and city folk might call it just plain crazy. Whatever it is, Emily Collits has it in spades and she wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I’ve been told I have a few screws loose in my head, and I almost take that as a compliment these days,” she laughs.

“Life’s short, you might as well do what you want.”

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