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Howdy folks, it’s the third week of September 2025, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
So the other day we asked a pretty simple question to rodeo fans on our Facebook page.
Who was the greatest bull rider of all time?
Woo-boy, there were a lot of opinions. Lane Frost, Freckles Brown, Jim Sharp, JB Mauney, Jim Shoulders.
But one name kept popping up from some very confident fans:
Don Gay.
Posted one fan: “Many great bull riders have come and gone, and they all had their moments. But when you come down to the best, I’m going with 8-time champ Mr. Don Gay. Whether you like him or not, you can’t argue with his success.”
What made Gay so great? We’ll explain that in this episode, on the week of his birthday, September 18, 1953.
Don was born in Mesquite, Texas. His path to bull riding was practically set from the start.
His father, Neal Gay, who is being inducted into our National Rodeo Hall of Fame this year, was already well-known in the rodeo world, first as a competitor and later as a stock contractor and co-founder of the Mesquite Championship Rodeo in 1958.
But Don’s childhood wasn’t without hardship. His mother, Evelyn “Cookie” Foster, died of leukemia when Don was only a year old. Neal later remarried, and Don and his brother Pete were raised by Kay Gay, who treated the boys as her own.
In the arena, Don was a rodeo prodigy.
He started riding steers at age six and was hooked. By the time he was a sophomore at Mesquite High School, he had already earned his Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association membership, something most cowboys don’t accomplish until well into adulthood.
Don graduated from high school in 1972, and that very same year, he qualified for his first National Finals Rodeo.
Only two years later, in 1974, he kicked off one of the most dominant streaks rodeo has ever seen.
Between 1974 and 1981, he won seven bull riding world championships in eight years. Add one more title in 1984, and Don had racked up a total of eight world bull riding championships.
It’s a record that still stands today.
Don broke the PRCA’s single-season earnings record in bull riding for eight straight years. He qualified for the NFR 13 times and won almost every major rodeo in the United States at least once.
In an interview with a rodeo blog in 2020, Don said, “If you set out to do something, don’t stop until you do it. It doesn’t mean you win first place at every rodeo on every ride. If you put out your best effort but didn’t get your own way and end up a little short, put that in the rearview mirror and go to the next one.”
One of his most famous rides came in 1977, when he matched up against the legendary bull Oscar at San Francisco’s Cow Palace. The ride scored a jaw-dropping 97 points—one of the highest-marked rides in the history of professional rodeo.
That same year, he also won the only sudden-death ride-off in NFR history.
To keep up with the demanding rodeo schedule, Gay earned his pilot’s license and began flying himself from rodeo to rodeo in a private plane. It allowed him to compete across the country without the grueling road miles that wore down so many other competitors.
Don was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2008.
He was added to the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1979, while he was still competing.
In 1997, Gay received the PBR Ring of Honor. In 2013, he received the Legends of ProRodeo award, and two years later, he was inducted into the Bull Riding Hall of Fame.
Don officially retired from competition in 1989, but he never left the sport behind. From 1989 to 1996, he ran All-Star Rodeo, a stock contracting business that supplied livestock to rodeos across the country.
Later, he became the general manager of Frontier Rodeo Company, while also taking on a role as one of the most recognized voices in the sport. Fans across America have heard Don Gay provide color commentary for decades on ESPN, Fox Sports, TNN and The Cowboy Channel, covering everything from PRCA rodeos to PBR events.
He also hosted his own semi-professional series, the Don Gay Bull Riding Tour, later renamed the Rank Bull Rider Tour.
Don told Wild Rides, a rodeo TV show: “For me, the greatest thing about being a rodeo cowboy is I never had to take off my uniform.”
And with that, we’ve qualified for the end of another episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with the words of Don Gay when asked if he would go back and change anything about his career: “I don’t think so. You’d like to smooth out all the bumps, but then you never know which bump it took to get you back up in the saddle.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
