Where Did All the Bankers Go?

Thomas H. Bailey

Remember when John Travolta played that tough urban cowboy riding that mind-numbing mechanical bull?  Guys stared, wanting to be cool like him, yet today you study the same scene and wonder how a modern man can achieve anything going nowhere.  Too staid for this generation.  Gotta jump off and get something done.

 

Even retired Wall Street titans are demanding more.

When 73 year old Thomas H. Bailey, the chief executive of Janus Capital Group, left his job in 2002, he didn’t even know how to mount a horse.  Today he’s become a star in the cowboy sport of cutting.

Cutting?  You need a scissors or two?

Nope.  It’s an Old West competition that measures the ability to handle horses and cows.  The idea is to cut the cow from the rest of the pack and then anticipate where the cow will turn next to keep him separated from the others.

 

Sounds easy?  Like a breeze, unless you have an unresponsive horse or a cow that darts in the opposite direction.  During an event last month in Kansas City, MO,  Bailey “cut” a steer from the group, and then dashed from side to side to prevent the cow from rejoining the herd.  He stayed balanced in the saddle showing why he’s earned almost $90,000 in this sport.

According to Kevin Helliker of The Wall Street Journal, these old business leaders have shown that if they work hard they can succeed in this money sport. 

                                                                                  

But they got their critics.

Some old timers complain that technology has created a super breed of cutting horse that is so talented that cowboy skills matter less than the money needed to buy a particular animal.  Jon Winkelried, 49, just resigned from Goldman Sachs where he made as much as $53 million a year and purchased a $460,000 cutting-horse stallion to his stable.  To date his winning's totaled $50,000.  But this is just the start.

Other old time cowboys believe that the competition’s only gotten better with the newcomers' riches and that the money has raised the I.Q. of the sport.  Some recent events have increased the purse to more that $40 million, a 50% jump over the past decade.

Cutting Clinic

  

Yes, things have changed.

In one gathering regular cowboys competed against a house builder, a shopping mall magnate, a heavy construction tycoon, several lawyers, and small-business owners—most all of them late-life cowboys.

 If you don’t go broke from the cut-throat ticker tapes of Wall Street and can keep your ass in the saddle while breaking a single cow away from the pack, you'll win.

 

And this gamble can make you rich.