CSI rodeo athlete pushes forward after being paralyzed at Twin Falls County Fair

[mahatmakanejeeves]

CSI rodeo athlete pushes forward after being paralyzed at Twin Falls County Fair

JULIE WOOTTON [e-mail] Sep 18, 2017

TWIN FALLS — On the first night of the Magic Valley Stampede PRCA Rodeo, Braxten Nielsen was the first competitor in bareback riding.

“He nodded his head. The gate opened,” College of Southern Idaho head rodeo coach Steve Birnie said. “The horse didn’t leave like they do.” ... The horse reared up that Aug. 31 night and smashed Nielsen against the back of the chute.

“Braxten got his hand loose out of the rigging, landed in the sitting position and couldn’t move,” Birnie said. ... The 24-year-old’s spinal cord was compressed and twisted, and he broke vertebrae in his back.

Quickly, Nielsen — a Roosevelt, Utah, native and member of the CSI rodeo team — was surrounded by bullfighters, emergency medical technicians, a physician and paramedics. ... Emergency responders loaded Nielsen into an ambulance, got him stabilized and sedated. “He was in excruciating pain at that point,” Birnie said. ... After arriving at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center, he was airlifted to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City. Meanwhile, the rodeo at the Twin Falls County Fairgrounds in Filer hadn’t even ended.

[GentryDixon]

1. Very sad.

This seems to be a right of passage for so many young men in the western states.

Link to tweet

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Thanks for adding that tweet. I'll add a link to the newspaper's Twitter account.

https://twitter.com/twinfallstn

"He's determined to walk again. " CSI rodeo athlete pushes forward after being paralyzed at Twin Falls County Fair https://buff.ly/2yjRjqx

Link to tweet

If you go to Google images to find pictures of Braxten Nielsen, you'll see that he spent all his time outside.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Similar thing:

He was just doing what he's done many times before.

Hoover's Ben Abercrombie suffers major neck injury in Harvard football debut