Hailing from Los Alamos, California is five-time World Champion Steer Wrestler Luke Branquinho. Although his career inside the arena has come to an end, he is one of the greatest to ever do it and he continues to be active in the sport through broadcasting, podcasting and more.
Branquinho’s start as a professional rodeo athlete is like that of an elite few, he is the 2000 Resistol Steer Wrestling and Overall Rookie of the Year. His first Gold Buckle came a few four years later.
“I never felt like I was ever better than anybody else. I always felt like I had to work to be better than everybody else. And it didn’t matter what I’d won that year or how much I’d won, what rodeos that I was winning at, I always knew that I had to go home and work to be better than the person behind me,” Branquinho said.
Coming off each World Championship, Branquinho said he started from scratch. It was not only a physical game but a mental game and one that made a huge impact on his success.
“I think my rookie year I learned a lot. I was a student of the game and not just steer wrestling but watching other guys that I traveled with and people around me on how they acted before the run, after the run, during the run and during the rodeo,” he said.
It was those observations that allowed Branquinho to set apart amateur rodeo and professional while making mistakes that, looking back, cost him a trip to Las Vegas as a rookie bulldogger. He took the positives into the next season and he threw the negatives away as he went on.
“Those were things I learned from that year. Even though not making the Finals was a hard pill to swallow, I think those mistakes I made my rookie year helped me become a better, stronger competitor mentally and physically through the rest of my career,” he said.
Branquinho’s advice to rookies is to maintain confidence. For him, mistakes and all, his confidence helped him join the exclusive history books that are the Resistol Rookies.
