Jacob Lees and Dean Thompson were travel partners during the 2023 season when they made their first National Finals Rodeo together. This year, as two-time NFR bareback riders, they split the Round 5 win after drawing the picks of the pen.
“There’s no besting him. He’s the best there ever was and the best there ever will be in my opion. Man, he’s so good. You can’t compare him to the anything else,” Lees said about C5 Rodeo’s Virgil.
Lees was the first 91 of the night aboard the living legend himself but Thompson followed it up with a matching score on the reigning Horse of the Year, Night Crawler, of Pickett Pro Rodeo.
“You can’t hesitate on the crawler, you know, jump one it was going on and from then on we were just going at it like crazy. You honestly can’t try to expect. You don’t really know what to expect until everything is happening,” Thompson said.
Jess Pope’s rematch with Frontier Rodeo’s Gun Fire landed him third-place money while Bradlee Miller cashed in yet again in fourth.
Thompson leads the NFR Average and is the only cowboy in any event to cash in all five rounds. He is the Projected Bareback Riding World Champion as well.
