He was 7 years old, and his mother had signed him up to ride steers at the country fair.
His only experience was having seen professional bull riding on television, so all he brought with him was a pair of work gloves. He didn't have spurs. He didn't even have a bull rope, much less a bell for it. He wasn't even sure which hand was supposed to go in the rope.
When they ran his steer into the chute, Lostroh had no idea what the procedure was. When the chute hand asked where his rope was, he looked up and said, "I don't have one."
"It was just one those deals where they throw you into the water and see if you can swim," recalled Lostroh, who had never even ridden sheep or calves before that day.
"I had ridden horses for a long time, and that steer just high loped across the arena. He didn't buck a whole lot, and I remember it being easy. I was riding him and riding him, and I kind of thought I was supposed to get bucked off, so I just kind of rolled off of him.
"I remember it was lots of fun and really different."
He also thought it might be the last time he'd experience that kind of adrenaline rush. He wouldn't ride again for another year.
Switch and click
Lostroh's parents Bruce and Dena divorced when he was young. His mother married Ivan Schlutz, and Lostroh spent a great deal of time at the Colorado farm of Ivan's parents Greg and Hilda.
They had horses and even buffalo. As he got older, he helped Greg put up hay, and eventually helped work cattle.
But his introduction to bull riding came in the summer of 1993, when Lostroh found a highlight tape from Cheyenne Frontier Days. It was from 1989 - the year that Lane Frost was killed - and although Lostroh lived just 80 miles south of the legendary event, he had never gone to see it in person.
"Somehow this tape showed up at my house and I wore that sucker out," said Lostroh, who after watching all the events keyed in on the bull riding.
"Little kids play cowboy all the time," he continued, "and for whatever reason, my seeing bull riding and just that time in my life or whatever, it just looked interesting and I wanted to try it out."
Although he rode his first steer with relative ease, he struggled for the first two or three years he rode steers regularly. "I really was terrible," he admitted. "I couldn't ride anything."
Eventually something clicked, and he got the hang of it.
He switched from riding with his right hand down to riding with his left. He rode the next 10 steers he got on.
"Yeah, I remember what it was like when I was right hand down," he recalled. "It was really quick. It was nod my head and see how far I could get out of the chute before I hit the dirt. It was pathetic.
"Winning and riding kind of came natural after that."
A few years later, when he and his best friend Josh Koschel were at a Little Britches Rodeo in nearby Greeley, Koschel's father Doug was joking around and said, "You know Kody, I'm not sure I've ever seen you ride one."
He not only watched Lostroh go 2-for-2 that day, but watched the 14-year-old win the event.
"I went out there that day - I had the best bull in the pen - and I just spurred him for all he was worth," said Lostroh.
"I always give his dad a hard time about it, because he didn't mean anything mean by it. He was just joking around, but it really did fire me up to excel."
Once he got to high school, Lostroh originally had no plans of competing on the rodeo team.
Instead he entered open bull riding events and junior rodeos because they paid more. He did well enough to carve out what he called "a decent living," but when Koschel qualified for the National High School Finals, Lostroh realized it might be fun for the two of them to compete there the next year.
He went on to win the Colorado state title as a sophomore, junior and senior. In 2003, his junior year, he tied Ryan McConnel for second at the National H.S. Finals. They lost out by two points, and Lostroh said he originally had the best bull in the pen drawn for the final round, but there was an error in how the bulls were numbered, so they gave him the first re-ride bull.
His senior year, he was competing in high school events as well as lower-level PBR events. As a freshman in college, his goal was to qualify for the College Finals and PBR Finals in the same year.
Head games
When Lostroh first started competing at PBR events, the earnings from his high school career allowed him to travel cross-country (and, at times, to Canada) for his pro career.
He once drove a rental car from Colorado to Medicine Hat, Alberta, for an event, then flew to San Antonio for another, before taking a 17-hour bus ride to get to a third, because it was the only way he could afford all three in one weekend.
"I'd blow every dime I had trying to get there," he said, "and then not win anything."
Times were tough, and money was hard to come by. "This is my chance ... and I choked," he told himself.
It was the first time he began experiencing the mental side of the sport. Lostroh would go four or five months without bucking off a single bull at high school or college events, but would go just as long without a qualified ride at a professional event.
That changed one day at a Touring Pro event in New Mexico.
He was traveling with Matt Weber, eight years his senior, and after bucking off, asked him what was wrong. Lostroh couldn't understand why he was having such a difficult time.
"You don't believe in yourself," Weber told him. "You need to realize you belong here."
Just as Doug Koschel had motivated him a few years earlier, Weber provided Lostroh with another turning point.
"That was the first time I even thought about it," said Lostroh, who went from there to Idaho Falls, Idaho, and recorded his first 90-point ride en route to winning the event. "Just a little different mental attitude in my head changed the outcome."
Lostroh eventually made it to the Built Ford Tough Series, and excelled among the best in the world.
He won the 2005 PBR Rookie of the Year title, and finished the year ranked 15th in the world. Over the next three years, he finished fifth, sixth and fifth again before making a run at the world title in 2009.
That year he rode 64.21 percent of his bulls, won a career-high five BFTS events, and beat out J.B. Mauney to realize his lifelong goal.
"It's pretty cool to look back on it now," said Lostroh, "and think about that first time when I just dove off the high dive and hoped I could swim, and it wasn't too much longer down the road winning a world title.
"It was the same type of adrenaline and excitement. The pure joy is still there. It's something that has never gone away."
He had accomplished something that he had previously considered to be nothing more than "high hopes."
But the 18 months since haven't been easy or fun for the 25-year-old Colorado native, who will be competing this weekend in Pueblo.
In fact, in many ways, following up a world title has been more challenging than winning it the first time.
"The biggest challenge has been finding the motivation to do it again," he said. "It's not that I don't want to. It's the fact that I know how much it took out of me to get it done. ... I never saw that coming, and didn't know that would come with winning."
Beyond the buckle
"I don't want riding bulls to be the definition of my life," Lostroh said. "I want it to be who I was as a person. I'm Kody. That's all."
Seven years after winning the opening round of his first BFTS event in St. Louis, Lostroh said he's riding for the same reason he started when he was 8: "I love the sport."
He's even come to the realization that winning a second title won't make him any happier than he already is. He and his wife Candace live on a ranch outside La Salle, Colo., and he's not worried about what he'll do when he decides to retire from riding.
He's been breeding bulls, and said perhaps he'll haul bulls instead of riding them.
"God has taken care of me to this point," Lostroh said, "and he'll continue to do so."
Lostroh isn't consumed by having won a world title. It actually makes him somewhat uncomfortable to hear people talk about him as one of the greats to have ridden in the PBR.
He's proud of being recognized for having near-perfect form, and he's proud of his accomplishments, but he's in search of something more.
"I don't know," he said. "It's something that never goes away, I guess, but it's not something I want people to know me by. I don't want them to just say, 'Oh, that's a World Champion.' I want them to be able to know who I am."
Somewhere there may be a young boy as inspired by the Lostroh's 2009 highlights as Lostroh was 20 years ago by the '89 highlights from Cheyenne.
"That would be pretty cool," Lostroh said. "For someone to repeat the past and chase his dream down, that would be pretty sweet."
He hopes that person can see more than just his gold buckle.
-by Keith Ryan Cartwright
Homecoming
Source: http://www.goteamsgo.com/forum/rodeo/148387-homecoming.html
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