A.J. Colletti rides for the home team at the National Western Stock Show.
A.J. Colletti is having a love affair that isn’t about to end anytime soon. His passion is unquenchable, his commitment never waivers even though the object of his love is often aloof, painful, and sometimes devastating. He wears that love like a tattoo inked on his very heart. A tattoo he shares with a small brotherhood, a tribe. A tribe that is rapidly dwindling.
As a bareback rider, A.J. Colletti is a full-fledged member of a dying breed. Of all the extreme sports under the umbrella of rodeo, bareback riding is the roughest on the body. Miles of tape, body armor, and various, specialized pieces of protective gear won’t give him a much longer window than 12 years to chase the dragon of the adrenaline spike only a seriously talented bucking horse will give him. For those born to chase the holy grail of a world’s bareback riding championship, their internal clock is always ticking.
Ask the handsome young Pueblo, Colorado, cowboy Colletti his age and you’ll get a charming smile and this: “I’m 23, plus five years experience.”
The Colletti family history on this continent began with the American Dream. In 1889, his great-great-great-grandfather stepped off of Italian soil to start the long voyage to a country where fresh starts were promised and opportunity was endless. The exotic Port of New Orleans and the rich, cultural melting pot of Louisiana welcomed him, but the Western railroad’s need for steel and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation of Pueblo promised a sweet financial future. It was to be a bumpy ride.
Two generations later, the family stopped depending on the mills, their eastern power broker owners, and the whims of the railroad and opened a restaurant. They also bought property west of town on the mesa and started to hobby farm. That love of farming is alive today in the Colletti family, but a craving for Grandma’s homemade spaghetti follows Colletti wherever the fierce, independent bucking horses lead him.
“My uncle Chuck rode bareback horses for 20 years,” Colletti says. “My cousin, Casey, has been to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo several times. I’ll never be satisfied until I get a chance at those great ‘TV Pen’ horses, the best of the best who give a guy the opportunity to show off his skills. Scarlett’s Web carried Casey to two Wrangler National Finals Rodeo wins. I dream about that Texas mare.”
Last year in Dayton, Ohio, the bareback riding muse abandoned him. A.J. hung up by his riding hand to the horse he’d drawn and dragged helplessly around the arena for what felt like forever. Healing took him out of the game until New Year’s Eve, exactly four months to the day after he’d been hurt.
Those re-entries are scary. Riding the great bucking horses is physical, to say the least, but when it comes down to brass tacks, it’s a mental game. A game of confidence that means taking the rhythm to the horse a tic ahead of his 1,400-pound lead. On New Year’s Eve, Colletti left the arena after the 8-second bout knowing he was back. The dragon was excruciatingly close once more.
When the invitation came from the National Western Stock Show to represent his home state in the exciting Colorado Versus The World event in Denver, Colletti was thrilled and ready. That night, in front of the record-setting crowd, he’d come down early. It wouldn’t make a dent in his pride or his commitment to his dreams. He would have written the chapter differently had he had the pen, but a lesson learned early and often in bareback riding is we never have the pen. There is one shot. One 8-second thrill at a time to make a mark on a world that moves quickly along and offers no quarter while taking many prisoners.
A.J. Colletti is a rodeo coach at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colorado, and teaches bareback riding at the Bronc Riding Academy in Argyle, Texas, and Texas Rodeo Bible Camp in Pampa, Texas.
