08/11/2026
Prayers for a speedy & full recovery🙏🏼, please share!
How is Cooper Filipek getting along?
A little bit better, thanks for caring enough to ask. But he’s now had a second surgery, and is still expected to take a year to fully heal from that horrific bucking horse rollover during his ride at the Cache County Fair & Rodeo in Logan, Utah last Thursday, August 6.
Before that horse—who is fine—went down, Cooper described his summer as “decent, been making money.” He was ranked 34th in the world and climbing.
Cooper had “a weird, mixed feeling about getting on that horse” in the first place, because he couldn’t find any stats on her. But he’d been getting heat from the generation before him about not getting on every horse he drew this year.
“No one knew much about that horse,” he said. “I got my riggin pulled, and was feeling pretty good. She was bucking good, then I could feel her turn real hard and she did that all-four-feet jump. The rollover happened in such a quick, uncontrollable way. I could feel her wanting to fall over, and all of a sudden I was underneath her. After that, it felt like someone ran over me with a car.
“I worked my hand out when I was underneath her. It was a blessing that riggin didn’t kill me. I saw it coming at me. It smashed my left thigh, but it didn’t go into my chest. I felt something pop. My lower back and neck were killing me right then and there. I could tell something bad happened. I could move my toes, but didn’t have the strength to stretch my legs out. All I could think was, ‘I broke my back. I need to wait for everybody to get out here to help me.’”
The pain was excruciating, but 23-year-old Cooper had the presence of mind to ask the ambulance crew not to pump him full of drugs.
“The adrenaline started wearing off pretty fast, but I told them I wanted to stay coherent while we figured out what all was wrong with me,” he said. “I started to shake and breathe hard, so they said I had to have something and they talked me into about a third of the drugs they usually give people in that condition.”
The miserable ambulance ride led him to Intermountain Health Logan Regional Hospital in Logan, where X-rays revealed a badly broken L5 vertebra in his low back and a hairline fracture in his right/riding hand.
“L5 was shattered, and they cleaned a bunch of bone fragments out on L4, L6 and L7, too,” he said. “I have three incisions on my back that are six to eight inches long.”
Cooper had his first surgery at 12:30 the next day, August 7, and two rods and six pins/screws were used to stabilize that L5 vertebra.
But his stable condition took a nosedive when the rod on the right side shifted out of place. Cooper had a second surgery on Sunday, August 9.
“I was really suffering, and X-rays showed the rod had moved,” he said. “They had to go back in on my right side, lengthen the rod and put in another pin. Now I have two rods and seven pins.”
Decades ago, Ty Murray explained to me that a breakthrough turning point in his career was when he turned the corner from rides being a blur to feeling like slow motion. Cooper understood exactly what I was asking about that.
“Since I won the College Finals (in 2025), rodeo has slowed down a lot for me,” he said. “Eight seconds is pretty long now, it’s not just a snap.”
Recovery from the fallout of this wreck won’t be one either. The wrist fracture, which is a common ailment in ba****ck rider brutality reality, will heal on its own with a brace.
The next step medically is to get cleared to make a move from the hospital to a local rehab center in Utah in order to get healed up enough to make the trip back home to his native Rapid City, South Dakota. That’s where Cooper’s long-haul recovery will at least start, with family around. Cooper thinks the rods will be removed later, but that’s yet to be seen for certain.
“Once I get out of the hospital, they think I’ll need rehab in Utah for a week or two or three before I can get independent enough to travel home,” he said. “It’s 11 hours home by car, and right at the moment there’s no way I can make that trip.”
Cooper has a house in Gillette, Wyoming. He won his college title while rodeoing for Gillette College, where four-time World Champion Ba****ck Rider Marvin Garrett is the roughstock coach.
“I’m kind of the assistant roughstock coach at Gillette. I help Marvin, and I definitely want to go help out there again when I get independent enough to go do that,” Cooper said. “I have some silversmithing back home to get done, and I want to get back to playing my fiddle.
“It’s going to be a year before I’m healed. The doctor here told me I’d never ride again. I can’t really think about that right now. I had hernia surgery three years ago and that also sucked. I’m just hoping to be able to get out of bed on my own a few weeks from now, so I can walk around by myself. I’m taking it day by day right now. I just want to get healed up.”
As for the yellow hat, vest and chaps, which so many have reminded Cooper is risky business on the rodeo superstitions front…
“Yellow is my favorite color,” he explained. “I’m from smalltown South Dakota, and some judges don’t know me. I started wearing my yellow hat my first ride in Denver when I was on my permit in 2024, and I was 86 points and won the round. Now people know who I am because of my yellow hat and chaps (allow me to remind those who don’t remember that four-time World Champion Ba****ck Rider Bobby Mote rode much of his career in yellow chaps, and million-dollar ba****ck rider RC Landingham has rocked yellow, too).
“Like they say, ‘If you’re going to wear a yellow hat, you better be able to ride.’ I wore yellow chaps in high school. One of my dad’s friends made me this hat. It’s short-brimmed, because I have too big of a nose and ears to have a big brim.”
Happy healing, Cooper. People you don’t even know are praying hard for a full recovery and bright future doing whatever you decide to do.
~
Because so many of you have asked how we can help Cooper, I’m giving you my two favorite options for ways that don’t involve companies taking a cut. One is hip and modern, the other is old school.
Venmo: -filipek
Last four of phone number: 4024
Cooper had to remove his CNFR picture with the green bucking chutes, because scammers stole it. Please be very careful to type it in exactly as it is here, dashes and all, and be sure and note it’s a gift, because if you mark business Venmo will take a cut.
For those of you who prefer to send a good, old-fashioned card and check:
Cooper Filipek
P.O. Box 1811
Rapid City, SD 57709
Thank you all for rallying behind Cooper. Our rodeo family is unmatched when it comes to helping our own.
