Bucking Convention
When Ezekiel Mitchell climbs on to a bull in the bucking chute, just before he enters the rodeo arena, he repeats a mantra in his head as he situates himself atop the two-thousand-pound beast: Finish, finish, finish. Ride, ride, ride. Stay down till you come up. Through the whistle.
“But once that gate opens, you don’t have time to think,” says Mitchell, a twenty-three-year-old professional bull rider known as Zeke or Blue to his friends,
