There comes a point in a great career when the numbers stop feeling like statistics and start becoming landmarks.
Jose Vitor Leme seems to be reaching them one after another.
Click to watch Leme’s record ride below
Only weeks ago in Anaheim, the three-time PBR World Champion recorded the 400th qualified ride of his career when he covered OptiWize Rescue Story for 88.45 points. Four hundred times making the whistle at PBR’s premier level — another number added to a résumé that was already crowded with championships, record-setting rides and defining moments.
Then came Kansas City.
On Friday night at PBR Teams: Outlaw Days, Leme climbed aboard Super Trooper with another piece of history within reach.
The video accompanying this story captures what happened next.
Leme stayed with Super Trooper for a season-high 92.20 points, delivering the kind of ride that has become unmistakably his — controlled when it needs to be, aggressive when it has to be and somehow composed in the middle of all that violence.
It was the 94th 90-point ride of his PBR career.
And with it, Leme pulled even with two-time World Champion Chris Shivers for the most 90-point rides in PBR history.
For 14 years, Shivers had stood alone at 94.
For one night, he had company.
By the next night, he didn’t.
On Saturday in Kansas City, Leme covered Moonlight Graham for 90.55 points and recorded the 95th 90-point ride of his career, moving past Shivers and taking sole possession of the all-time record.
It would have been enough for one night.
It wasn’t all he accomplished.
The ride also secured Leme his third PBR Teams MVP title, making him the first rider to win the honor three times. And because his 90.55 was enough to push the Austin Gamblers past the Oklahoma Wildcatters, it helped secure Austin a Top 3 seed and a first-round bye at the upcoming PBR Teams Championship in Las Vegas.
That is what makes this particular stretch of Leme’s career worth watching.
These aren’t ceremonial milestones being collected by a rider looking back on what he has already accomplished. Leme is reaching them while still determining outcomes, still leading a team, still winning titles and still producing 90-point rides when the moment demands them.
The record book is changing because he is still competing at the level that created the records in the first place.
There was something fitting about the progression.
In September: 400 qualified rides.
Friday in Kansas City: 94 career 90-point rides, pulling even with one of the sport’s great names.
Saturday: 95, and the record belonged to Leme alone.
Along the way came another MVP championship and another important win for Austin.
It can be easy to lose perspective when milestones start arriving this quickly. One historic number replaces another before there has been much time to appreciate the first.
But 400 qualified rides tells one part of the story.
Ninety-five 90-point rides tells another.
Three World Championships and now three PBR Teams MVP titles tell still more.
The common thread is not simply longevity. It is the level at which Leme has been able to sustain it.
After breaking Shivers’ record Saturday night, Leme offered perhaps the clearest indication that he isn’t particularly interested in treating any of this like a finish line.
“I’m just starting. I’m still there, and I’m going to hang in there and try again.”
That may be the most important number that doesn’t appear in the record book: there is still another bull.
Another eight seconds.
Another opportunity to add something to a career that already belongs among the most accomplished in PBR history.
Records inevitably invite comparisons between generations. Shivers held his mark for 14 years. J.B. Mauney and Justin McBride occupy their own places in the history of the sport. Leme is now adding his name to that conversation in increasingly permanent ways.
But perhaps the more interesting thing to watch right now isn’t where Leme ultimately ranks among those names.
It is that his story isn’t finished.
The 400th qualified ride wasn’t an ending.
The 94th 90-point ride wasn’t an ending.
Apparently, neither was No. 95.
Jose Vitor Leme is still riding.
And the record book is still moving with him.
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