Jade Corkill surely earned some sort of cool cat award in 2025, for taking a couple years off from the rodeo road then picking up right where he left off—kicking butt. He didn’t need to get warmed up; he just went straight back to winning. Corkill cashed most of his 2025 checks on the back of Bodak Yello, who’s 10 now.
Strong in stature, Bodak’s “about 15 hands tall, and probably weighs 1,100 pounds. He’s not a little heel horse. He’s bigger, old-school built. He’s not long. He’s short-backed with a rounded hip, and pretty compact. He’s all there, and a lot bigger than people think.
“This horse is super strong. He’s not as fast as Caveman or Huey, but he’s got plenty of speed; more than you need. Conformationally, he’s perfect for a heel horse, and feels very balanced when you’re riding him. He uses his ass kind of like Switchblade did. It’s natural and easy for him. I think it’s just how he’s made.”
Jade Corkill’s 2025 Comeback
At 38, three-time champ of the world Corkill just roped at his 14th NFR after sitting out 2023 and 2024 by choice. Why’d he do that smack dab in the middle of his prime?
“My heart wasn’t really in it anymore, and if you feel that way, you have no business being out here,” he said. “I wanted to be around more for my kids, so I went home.”
After the big break, he got to feeling it again, and made plans to start roping with Clint Summers in the summer of 2025 (Summers roped with Paul Eaves at the winter rodeos, then skipped the spring run). After missing the winter rodeos because he didn’t make the previous-year qualifications cut, Corkill heeled for Aaron Tsinigine during the California run last spring.
Jade’s always had a strong preference for being in the same boat strategy-wise as his partner going into the NFR. So the fact that he and Spinny won about $16,000, which put Corkill’s earnings within $300 of Summers’ when they joined forces at the end of May, felt like fate.
“I don’t like roping when one guy has a lot more or less than the other guy,” Jade said. “It feels like you’re roping two different game plans, especially when you get to the NFR. Things just kind of lined up with me catching up to Clint, this horse being ready and my whole family being behind me doing this. I was in a good place again.
“Clint’s got the best head horse for the whole year (Joe was the 2025 Nutrena Head Horse of the Year presented by AQHA), and for the NFR (Transmission). We’ve been good buddies for a long time, and once I had my heart back in it, it’s been fun roping with somebody who wants to win the world as much as I do. It’s been fun and refreshing to have a goal again.”
“Wild as Hell” to First String
The Fallon, Nevada native, who now lives in Victoria, Texas, bought Bodak as a 4-year-old.
“He belonged to a guy in Texas, Lane Cooper, and I actually went to try him for a lady for her kid,” Corkill said. “He was green, and he was wild as hell. He was not a kid’s horse, but I could tell if he had any brain at all and wanted to be good, he had the potential to be whatever he wanted to be. He just had that feel, and that ‘it’ factor.”
When he got him, Jade was still rodeoing, and this horse was not ready. Jackpots were just what he needed, then Corkill went to a few amateur rodeos with Shane Philipp in 2024.
“Bodak’s still wild on the ground,” Jade said. “He’s gentle and broke and a pleasure to be around when you’re on him. But you’ve got to drug him to shoe his back feet. He’s not mean at all, but if you walk around the corner and shake a paper bag at him, he’s going to tear the trailer down.
“I went to 76 rodeos in 2025, and didn’t ride him at four of them. I rode him everywhere from Salinas and Cheyenne to Puyallup and Nampa. The only reason I didn’t ride him at Pendleton was because I couldn’t have gotten ice nails in his feet without him being too groggy to rope on. This horse has been great everywhere.”
After getting such a late start on the 2025 season, it was straight epic after that. Team Summers and Corkill won about $50,000 from Reno in June through Prescott, which ended on July 6. How much did this palomino horse have to do with his 2025 highlights reel?
“Most of it,” Jade said. “You have to have a badass horse now to hang. Every steer matters more than ever, and you have to have a good horse to have the year I just had—it was the best regular season I’ve ever had.
“Bodak’s just a winner. He reminds me of all my best horses. Ice Cube, Caveman, Switchblade and Huey were all so good. Fact is, if I could only have one of them back, I would do that by random draw and spin the wheel. And they all made me think this is the horse I want to ride right now.”
It’s all systems go again for Summers and Corkill in 2026. As always, Jade’s job one is to “try to win the world every time I do it.”
The second coming of Jade Corkill has been fun for fans and spectators, and has been a cool experience for him, too.
“It’s been a lot different,” he said. “I was excited to do it again, and that was a little different than how it had been. This time I had the experience to know that when we didn’t do good it was just part of it. I’ve gotten better at that over time. I’ve matured enough to understand that no one wins every single time, and you just need to forget about the bad runs and go to the next one.”
—TRJ—
