09/06/2026
A calf ran past a barrel and knocked a five-year-old boy right off its back at his very first rodeo. He got up, dusted himself off, and never looked back. Fifteen years later, he became the first Canadian in history to be crowned World Champion bull rider.
Born and raised in Redcliff, Alberta, near Medicine Hat, Cody Snyder didn't wait to be old enough for real competition. When his parents weren't watching, he'd climb on calves, sheep, anything with four legs on the family farm. His first official rodeo experience came at just five years old. By eight he was riding junior steers. By twelve, his first bull. By fifteen, he was already the Canadian Amateur Bull Riding Champion.
He trained under Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Famer Dale "Hoot" Rose, spending hours in his practice pen — warming numb hands in freezing Alberta winters before climbing on and pretending to be Don Gay, the reigning bull riding legend of the era.
He turned pro at just seventeen years old, and the road wasn't smooth right away. He struggled through disappointing rodeos in Charlottetown, Halifax and Saint John, bucking off for no reason he could explain. Then everything changed on a bull named Convoy — a bull almost nobody could ride. Cody sat up, and as he described it, the lights just turned on. Everything slowed down.
By 1982, at nineteen, he was leading the Canadian Professional Rodeo bull riding standings. Then in 1983, at just twenty years old and a virtual unknown on the world circuit, Cody Snyder beat every long shot in the sport and captured the PRCA World Championship in Oklahoma City — becoming the first Canadian in rodeo history to claim the title. That same year, he laid down a 95-point ride at the Canadian Finals Rodeo — a score that still stands as the highest in Canadian rodeo history over forty years later.
He said it himself, looking back on the moment that changed his entire life — "That was the defining moment."
Four National Finals Rodeo qualifications. Nine Canadian Finals Rodeo qualifications — a Canadian bull riding record. The 1986 Canadian Bull Riding Championship. Cowboy of the Year among his peers in 1994. He rode through broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken collarbone and torn groin muscles before a career-ending wrist and shoulder injury finally forced him to retire in 1993, closing out his career in Fort Worth, Texas — the same city that would later welcome him home for one more honor.
He never left the sport. Alongside his wife Rhonda, Cody built Bullbustin' Inc., producing more than 400 bull riding events across North America and raising over $2 million for charity along the way.
In 2023, Cody Snyder became the first Canadian ever inducted into the Bull Riding Hall of Fame in Fort Worth — voted in by the very champions he once rode alongside. He called it the honor that means the most of all.
A calf that bucked him off at five. A world title at twenty. A legacy that never crossed back over the border.
That is Cody Snyder. 🤠🐂🍁
