After Coleby Payne/Clay Smith missed and Clint Summers/Jake Long took the lead in the Average, Tyler Wade/Wesley Thorp had only a few minutes to recalibrate their Round 10 strategy. They admitted they weren’t entirely sure what they needed to do to win the World Title, but knew they had a good steer, so they decided to just make the same run they had all 10 nights.
It resulted in a 3.8, good for second in the round and more than enough for back-to-back Gold Buckles. Wade said it was the type of situation you dream about when you’re a little kid, backing in the box needing to be 4 flat to win the World Championship.
“10 seconds before we got in the box, I looked at (Thorp) and said ‘what do we need to do,’ and he said ‘make our run,’” Wade said. “We kind of left it all out.”
“I think to make a great team, you need two guys at their best that work well together. It naturally works together on consistency and speed. The way we rope together works. It’s just a comfort level where I can do my best and he can do his best.”
Entering Round 10, there was a head-spinning number of scenarios, and many of them would have resulted in split World Champions. At the end of Round 9, it was projected Thorp would win the Heeling World Title, but Wade would come up short on the head side.
Thorp said at the beginning of the year, the goal is to have a chance in Round 10 and in 2024, it was an up-and-down road to get there Las Vegas. They won the first two Go-Rounds with record-setting 3.7-second runs in each. After that, they missed the next two before responding with 3.6s in Rounds 5 and 6. At that point, they had opened up a lead of $60,000, but things were far from over.
They had two consecutive no times in Rounds 7 and 8, which opened the door for a handful of other teams to have the opportunity to win the World.
“It’s hard to sleep (when you miss),” Wade said. “It’s hard team roping, because you’re letting down everybody when you don’t do your job. For me, I just hate letting people down.”
Ultimately, they rebounded with a 4.6 in Round 9 and Round 10’s 3.8. Of their six qualified times, they averaged 3.8 seconds.
It is Wade’s second World Title and Thorp’s third. They finished with $361,480 apiece, $169,742 of which came at the NFR.
When asked if they went to bed on Friday thinking they’d wake up World Champions, Wade had a simple answer.
“We didn’t sleep.”
