Team makes the best of a bad break

Thursday, Dec. 2, 1999 | 3:53 a.m.

PRCA

Rich Skelton

World titles: 1997-98 World Champion Team Roper (Heeler)

Hometown: Llano, Texas

Date of birth: June 18, 1966

Height/ weight: 5-8, 178 pounds

1998 earnings: $127,646

1998 NFR earnings: $65,962

Joined PRCA: 1986

NFR qualifications: 7 (1990, '93, '95-99, invited 1994)

In 1997, Rich Skelton shook a rather large monkey off his back.

In 1998, he gave it a first-class funeral.

Skelton, of Llano, Texas, won his first world team roping championship in 1997 in record-breaking fashion after spending much of his career in the best-never-to-win-a-gold-buckle category. In 1998, he and header Speed Williams won $65,962 each at the 1998 National Finals Rodeo to finish the year with $127,646 and $128,472, respectively, and their second consecutive world titles.

Though the pair entered the 40th NFR ranked second in their respective categories, nine days before they won the world titles for a second time Skelton and Williams looked like they had thrown away their chances for repeat championships.

In the first round of the '98 Finals, Williams made his usual quick throw and was heading left when he failed to complete the dally of his rope around his saddle horn and lost his rope. The steer trotted out of the arena dragging Williams' rope and any chance at the $32,512 per man first-place average checks through the Thomas and Mack Center dirt.

For the defending champs, the 1998 NFR had just become nine one-head rodeos. Skelton, 32, said that the disaster freed he and Williams up to go for the day money every night.

"It really made everything a lot easier because then we didn't have anything to lose," Skelton said. "We just went as fast as we could and we made some good runs and it worked out."

From that moment on, the pair was virtually unstoppable.

They won round two in 4.2 seconds and placed in rounds three and four.

Then in round five they won in 3.9 seconds -- just a tenth of a second off the NFR arena record -- to better the second-place team by a runaway 1.2 seconds.

They placed third in round No. 6 and sixth in No. 7, then suffered a broken barrier and 10-second penalty in round eight.

But in round nine, they pulled out all the stops. They came tight in 3.8 seconds to win their third round of the rodeo and match the arena record set by Doyle Gellerman and Britt Bockius in 1995.

Skelton caught all nine steers that Williams turned by two feet and the team's slowest time in the field was 7.3 seconds.

"We had some really good steers. Speedy did a good job of getting it on them fast and gave me a lot of time to make my throw," Skelton said.

Coupled with the increase in the 1998 NFR team roping purse, Skelton and Williams' supreme performance broke their '97 NFR team roping earnings record and their '97 heading and heeling annual earnings benchmarks.

"I figured our records would get broken, but I sure didn't know we were going to do it because there are a lot of great teams out here," Skelton said. "We were just glad that we were able to do it. Equal money out here just made things great."