There comes a time when even legends leave retirement pastures for greener ones beyond the rainbow bridge.
For 612 Ridin’ Solo, that final pasture came on Aug. 10.
Or simply “Solo” to Cord McCoy, who knew him not just as a champion, but as one of his own.
McCoy shared the news of Solo’s passing on Instagram the following day with a short message that said everything it needed to.
“612 Ridin Solo, thanks for all the great rides.”
Underneath it, the dates that bookended his life: March 2, 2016-Aug. 10, 2026.
Solo had been retired from competition and spending his days on cows, a quieter life earned after years of hauling across the country, bucking beneath the brightest lights in bull riding and building a résumé few bovine athletes ever will.
He died of natural causes on Aug. 10, closing the final chapter of a life spent doing what he loved.
The ending was quiet.
The life before it was anything but.
Ridin’ Solo was a two-time PBR World Champion Bull, winning consecutive titles in 2022 and 2023 and joining one of the most exclusive groups in the sport.
He appeared at seven PBR World Finals and twice at the National Finals Rodeo. Before any of that, he was an ABBI Futurity World Champion and later an ABBI Cowgirl Futurity World Champion.
His lifetime earnings surpassed $450,000, but the numbers only begin to explain what Solo meant to McCoy Rodeo.
He was a champion. He was a breeding cornerstone. He was family.
And from the very beginning, he was a bull who wanted one thing more than anything else.
To buck.
Ridin’ Solo was raised by Curtis Peoples of Ardmore, Oklahoma, from a breeding program Peoples had spent generations developing.
He arrived at McCoy Ranch in Lane, Oklahoma, as a 2-year-old in 2018, already carrying the athletic ability that would eventually take him to the top of the sport.
“He had talent and he started bucking right off,” McCoy said in 2022. “He had all that from day one.”
The problem was getting him to wait long enough to show it.
Solo had little patience for the chute, the dummy or any of the steps that came before the gate opened. He wanted to get straight to the part he loved.
“He just wanted to start early,” McCoy said. “He didn’t want to hold still to get the dummy on. All he wanted to do was buck.”
That eagerness became part of the process of turning a naturally gifted young bull into a polished athlete.
McCoy worked with him week after week, sometimes walking him into the chute, putting the dummy on his back, flanking him and then deliberately not letting him buck.
The goal was not simply to make him explosive.
It was to make him consistent.
McCoy compared the process to turning a street fighter into a trained boxer.
Ridin’ Solo had all the power. He just had to learn how to control it.
The patience paid off.
In 2018, Solo won the ABBI Futurity World Championship. From there, the once-impatient youngster developed into one of the most dependable elite bulls of his generation.
He remained plenty eager, though.
Solo learned to listen for the chute latch and would sometimes try to leave at the slightest sound.
McCoy and his crew developed routines around him, even muffling the latch and changing how the gate was opened so Solo would leave when they wanted him to, not when he heard the first hint that it was time.
It was a small detail that said plenty about the bull.
Solo always wanted to go.
Once he did, few riders could stop him.
Across 93 recorded PBR outs, Ridin’ Solo bucked off 79 riders for an 84.9% buckoff rate.
Riders lasted an average of just 3.80 seconds against him, while Solo averaged a 44.30-point bull score.
At his best, he was much more than difficult.
He was spectacular.
In February 2022 in Little Rock, Arkansas, Solo was marked a career-high 47.5 points against Dalton Kasel, one of the defining performances of the season.
That same year, he went from contender to world champion.
Ridin’ Solo entered the 2022 PBR World Finals chasing reigning champion Woopaa and left Fort Worth with the title, becoming the surprise winner of the YETI World Champion Bull race.
One year later, there was no surprise.
Solo chased down Cool Whip with a dominant World Finals performance to claim a second consecutive world championship.
Only a handful of bulls in PBR history have won multiple world titles, and fewer still have done it in consecutive years.
Solo had entered rare company.
By 2024, McCoy was giving him the chance to chase something even rarer: a third straight world championship.
“And honestly, the only reason that Solo is here is, if he’s got a shot to win it three times, I want to give it to him,” McCoy said at the time. “But other than that, he doesn’t owe me anything.”
That sentiment followed Solo through the final stage of his career.
McCoy knew what the bull had already given him.
Seven World Finals.
Two world titles.
Two NFR appearances.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in earnings.
And countless miles carrying the McCoy Rodeo name from one arena to the next.
There was nothing left to prove.
“He’s done more than I’d ever dream any animal could do,” McCoy said.
Solo still had plenty of buck left in him.
His final 90-point ride came Jan. 20, 2024, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when Cassio Dias covered him for 90.75 points.
Solo was marked 44.75 points in the matchup.
His final PBR out came Feb. 23, 2025, in Jacksonville, Florida, where Felipe Furlan rode him for 88 points while Solo earned a 43-point bull score.
Not long after, McCoy decided the great one had done enough.
Ridin’ Solo was officially retired during the 2025 PBR World Finals Elimination Rounds inside Cowtown Coliseum in Fort Worth, the same city where he had made so much history.
“We wanted to retire him at the top of the game,” McCoy said, “and we felt like the timing was right here at the PBR Finals and let him go out on top.”
For McCoy, his wife Sara McCoy and their daughter Tulsa McCoy, the ceremony was more than the end of a competitive career.
It was a farewell to an athlete they considered part of the family.
And retirement did not mean Solo’s influence was finished.
His genetics became a foundation of the McCoy Rodeo breeding program.
First Infraction, one of his sons, reached the premier level while Solo was still competing, and McCoy looked toward the next generation as the champion’s lasting contribution to the sport.
“That’s Solo’s future, is offspring and what’s coming down the pipe,” McCoy said.
His own beginning had come from careful breeding, too.
Solo was by Peoples - 31 and out of 319 Miss Ridin Solo, the result of generations of work in the Peoples program.
His name itself came from an early chapter of his life.
After Solo’s sire was injured fighting other bulls, Peoples kept the promising young bull penned separately to prevent the same thing from happening.
He was, quite literally, riding solo.
Yet for a bull whose name suggested solitude, his life became deeply intertwined with the people around him.
At home, the fierce athlete riders saw inside the arena was almost unrecognizable.
McCoy described him as a big pet with an exceptionally soft heart.
“Solo is the kind of a complete exception to the rule because he’s got the softest heart,” McCoy once said. “He just loves to buck, and he’s figured out how to jump high and turn fast to get the guys off his back.”
At the ranch, he loved people.
He could be brushed all over.
He would run, kick and play in the pasture, sometimes bucking for no reason other than the fact that he apparently enjoyed doing it.
“He’ll be bucking 90 points in the pasture,” McCoy joked.
That may have been the simplest explanation for what made Ridin’ Solo special.
He did not need anger to buck.
He did not need to be mean.
He simply loved his job.
McCoy once compared professional bucking bulls to fighters who spend most of the week living ordinary lives before stepping into the ring and knowing exactly what to do.
Solo understood his job better than most.
When the gate opened, he became one of the best bucking bulls in the world.
When it closed, he went back to being Solo.
The bull McCoy could brush.
The bull his family loved.
The bull who helped take McCoy Rodeo from the ranch to Madison Square Garden, the National Finals Rodeo, the PBR World Finals and countless stops between.
And eventually, the bull who earned the right to spend his final days simply being a bull.
Out on cows.
Away from the noise.
No score waiting on the board.
No rider climbing across the chute.
No world title left to chase.
Just green grass and retirement.
Now, that pasture is empty.
But Ridin’ Solo leaves behind something much bigger than one.
Two world championships. Seven World Finals appearances. Two NFR trips. An ABBI Futurity World Championship. An ABBI Cowgirl Futurity World Championship. 79 PBR buckoffs. Generations of offspring still to come.
And for the McCoy family, nearly a decade of mornings, miles and memories with an animal who gave them more than they ever imagined.
Every time McCoy watched him buck, he used to think the same thing.
“The world has got to see this bull.”
And for a long time, the world was lucky enough to watch.
Now, for Ridin’ Solo, the ride is over.
But Solo will not be riding alone into whatever pasture comes next.
He takes with him the gratitude of a family, the respect of a sport and a lifetime’s worth of great rides.
Just like Cord said.
Thanks for all of them.