Four-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo header JoJo LeMond has left the arena in the back of an ambulance just one time in his cowboy career. It’s a Cinch Timed Event Championship flashback he’d like to forget. But not even his worst rodeo-related nightmare could keep this Andrews, Texas all-around hand from a return trip to the Lazy E.
It might be fair to say LeMond and the Timed Event have a love-hate relationship.
“I won third a couple times—that was good,” he grinned. “In 2009, I tore the ACL and PCL in my left knee in the bulldogging. But I kept team roping, and set the heading and heeling records. Spencer (Mitchell) and Jade (Corkill) have since beat those records (Corkill was 4.3 in the heeling in 2013, then Mitchell was 4.3 in the heading in 2014), but it was pretty cool to have them both at one time. A couple years later I tore up my right knee at the Windy Ryon in the steer roping.
“Several years later, I had a bulldogging steer hit me at the Timed Event. Everything went to hell in a handbasket. It bruised my spine and internal organs. Pretty sure that’s my only ambulance ride out of an arena. It took me awhile to get over that. I couldn’t even ride a horse.”
LeMond has headed at the NFR for Martin Lucero in 2008, Randon Adams in 2009, Cory Petska in 2010 and Junior Nogueira in 2015, when JoJo rolled up from 16th to replace Jake Barnes after a horse fell practicing for that year’s Finals. LeMond has also qualified for five National Finals Steer Ropings, in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
“My wife (Blair) was a school teacher, so we went as a family to the steer ropings in the summertime,” said JoJo, whose family also includes son Newt, 18; daughter Shaylee, 16; and son Gunnar, 14.
LeMond pulled up from team roping on the full-time rodeo trail after that last NFR in 2015.
“I just didn’t feel it was fair to my family to be gone all the time,” he said. “Rodeo’s a single-man’s game. I didn’t think it was fair for my wife to be home working and me out playing cowboy.”
These days, LeMond Performance Horses rides 50-60 head of outside horses on a year-round basis.
“I train and show cutting horses,” he said. “I went rodeoing when I was 18, then went home and took a job riding 2-year-olds at a cutting horse place. I always knew this is what I would do for a living. Newt and have started 40-50 2-year-olds the last few years. The majority are cutters. I also keep a few rope horses around, and go to a few rope horse futurities.
“I love the cutting way more than I ever did roping. I roped to make a living. Now we make cutting horses. We make a living at it, and we’re getting to ride really nice horses. We have some amazing clients, and it’s great to get to ride great horses. I also have 2,000 head of yearlings turned out, and day work and cowboy.”
So why in the world does he want to return to such a grueling cowboy contest as the Timed Event at 42?
“I might be 42, but I feel like I’m 65,” he said. “I have a few aches and pains from getting ready for Timed Events past. But I have a lot of people behind me, and a lot of cutting horse people coming to watch and root me on. I don’t want to let them down. I just want to prove to myself that I can go get through it. I’m going to prove all the doubters in the old fat guy wrong.”
About that. LeMond is 6 feet tall, and tipped the scales at a slight 145 pounds when he was rodeoing.
“I weigh 215 pounds,” he said. “I’m definitely bigger and fatter than I once was. I’m full grown now. But I’m not scared of any of it, and I feel like I can still do it. I have a good set of horses, and can still rope sharp enough to get by. And I’m sure I haven’t lost much of my bulldogging ability.”
JoJo will head at his ninth CTEC on Gunnar’s horse Raider, whom they raised and trained. He’ll rope calves on Shaylee’s breakaway horse Sylvester. Look for LeMond to heel on either his own young futurity horse Shaq or Brad Lund’s Rabbit, a horse JoJo used to show who’s now owned by Heather Hankins. NFR steer wrestler Bray Armes, who recently cracked back out, will be there for him with a bulldogging team. LeMond will steer rope on a horse they call Elvis that he helped train for Bobby Boyd and now belongs to Chris Glover.
The original plan was for Newt to head and heel for his dad at the Timed Event, but now Newt’s competing at the World’s Greatest Horseman at the same time. Armes is handling the hazing chores, Chris Francis will head for JoJo in the heeling, and Cade Passig will heel for him in the heading. Francis and Passig won the 2018 BFI in Reno before the roping moved to the Lazy E in 2020.
LeMond was a renowned reaching gunslinger when he headed for a living.
“I can’t reach across the table to grab the salt anymore,” grinned the guy who went 3.4 in front of Adams in Round 9 at the 2009 NFR to break the then-3.5-second Thomas & Mack Center record until a few runs later when Chad Masters and Jade Corkill went 3.3. “When I rodeoed, I couldn’t catch four in a row. I’m in horse trainer mode now. I run right up in the middle of them and catch.”
Tell us one more time why you want to risk another round of Timed Event punishment, JoJo.
“I love the Timed Event—it’s a cowboy event,” he said. “I felt like I left a lot there, and could have done better in the past. I hurt myself before I even got there some years by overdoing it practicing for it. Then there were those two years I got hurt and didn’t get to finish. I don’t think the competitive nature ever leaves anyone who rodeos for a living, and I don’t think a guy ever forgets how to do it. I want to go back healthy, and try it one more time.”
