YORKTON - Nick Tetz has won the 2024 PBR Canada National Finals and been crowned the 2024 PBR Canada Champion.
It was the culmination of a great year for the Calgary bull rider as he won $153,375 at the finals as Tetz concluded the 2024 Canadian season having earned an unprecedented $249,622.29 on home soil, going a torrid 34-for-61 (55.74 per cent).
Tetz also broke the season event win record. Following his victory at the 2024 PBR Canada National Finals, Tetz rode to victory at 12 events, while also registering 20 round wins across both the elite Cup Series and Touring Pro Division.
“It feels good,” Tetz told Yorkton This Week, adding the championship “was one of the goals I wrote down on a piece of paper (at the start of the season).”
Tetz said putting goals on paper is a way for him to stay focused on achieving them.
“I just find it helps me stay focused throughout the year. . . Focused on why I’m there.”
Certainly the grind of bull riding can wear on a rider, and being able to see that goal in print helps on days one is tired, or things are not going the way one would hope, he said.
With the recent win Tetz is now one of just five riders to have won the PBR Canada Championship multiple times, first victorious in 2022. He joins the likes of three-time Champion Aaron Roy from Yellow Grass, Sask. and two-time title holders Zane Lambert, Ponoka, Alta, Cody Coverchuk from Meadow Lake, Sask., and Dakota Buttar from Eatonia, Sask.
Tetz said this win feels somehow better, in-part because he came so close in 2023.
“One more ride and I would have ended up winning it,” he lamented, adding that said he let it fire his desire in 2024. “I just kept my head down and kept riding bulls.”
Looking at the recent win he noted it was special.
“I think this year it kind of is (sweeter),” he said, adding he had some good travel partners who helped get him through the ups and downs, “. . . It felt more like a team effort this year.”
And it worked.
In Edmonton Tetz said his bovine partners were very much to his liking.
“I felt really good about all my bulls,” he said.
Tetz was quick to strike in Round 1, besting Emerald Inn (X6 Ranch Bucking Cattle/B2 Braithwaite Ranches) for 85.25 points.
It was Tetz’s third ride on Emerald Inn, and it set him up for what was to come.
“I felt really good having that one to set myself up for the rest of the weekend,” he said.
In the follow-up rounds riders had some control of their fate with a chance to select bulls based on where they were in the event standings.
In round two that meant Ain’t About Fame (Thompson Rodeo Livestock) for Tetz, a bull he rode for 83.25 points.
It was a gutsy pick in the sense Tetz reported in seven previous encounters he made the buzzer only twice. That included an encounter in Saskatoon only a few weeks earlier, where he hit the dirt ahead of the buzzer, but gained confidence too.
“I set my rope too far in the middle,” said Tetz, adding even with that miscalculation he rode to 7.7 seconds, so he said he knew he could make the ride.
Next Tetz rode Ain’t About Fame (Thompson Rodeo Livestock) for 83.25 points.
Then with the year-end Championship in hand, Tetz then cemented his National Finals event win as one of just two riders to go a perfect four-for-four as he faced a Langham Kid (Two Bit Bucking Bulls) in the championship round.
A PBR Canada release noted, “less than a month after covering the powerful bovine athlete for a monster 90 points to win the Cup Series event in Medicine Hat, Tetz delivered his fourth qualified ride in six attempts atop Langham Kid for 87.5 points Saturday night to punctuate his event win.”
When the dust settled, Tetz finished 2024 248.25 points ahead of runner-up Coverchuk.
Tetz also became the fourth rider to win the PBR Canada Championship and PBR Canada National Finals in the same season. He joins Lambert (2017), Coverchuk (2018) and Daylon Swearingen (2019 | Piffard, New York).
“Grand Funk (Kinky Buckers) was anointed the 2024 Canadian Global Bull of the Year, concluding the season with an unrivalled 44.13-point average, 0.3 points ahead of No. 2 Ringling Road (Wilson Rodeo). The powerful bovine capped his season with a 43.25-point out in the championship round of the National Finals, earned for his 2.78 seconds of work against Jake Gardner (Fort St. John, B.C.),” stated the PBR Canada release.
Chanse Switzer (Hazenmore, Saskatchewan) was crowned the 2024 PBR Canada Rookie of the Year. Despite being sidelined following Round 1 of the Canadian National Finals due to injury, he finished the season No. 8 in the standings.
