When Ryan and his brother Lane experienced similar injuries while saddle bronc riding – eighteen years apart – they both spent months in rehabilitation at the Glenrose.
For rural Alberta brothers Ryan Wozny and Lane Cust, some might say saddle bronc riding was in their blood.
Growing up in Bonnyville, Alberta, Ryan and Lane were your typical farm boys. With days spent raising cows and riding horses, it was no surprise when they both decided to pursue careers in rodeo.
Lane, ten years younger than Ryan, idolized his older brother who started his professional career as a saddle bronc rider at a young age.
Saddle bronc riding, a physically demanding sport, requires athletes to attempt to ride a bucking horse (bronco) for eight seconds. Riders must adhere to strict rules, including keeping one hand on the rein, maintaining both feet in the stirrups, and ensuring their spurs touch the horse’s shoulders on the first jump.
In his first year competing professionally, Ryan, then nineteen, sustained a severe spinal cord injury after an accident with his horse left his mobility impaired from the waist down.
Ryan spent the next eight months at the Glenrose undergoing intensive rehabilitation. Today, he’s able to walk with the assistance of crutches.
“I remember walking the hallways with my brother lots of times,” says Lane, who – nine years old at the time – could not predict that eighteen years later he’d be walking those same halls again, the next time as a patient himself.
Fast-forward ten years, Lane’s own career as a saddle bronc rider was taking off. In 2014 and 2015, he won the ‘champion’ title at the Canadian Novice Saddle Bronc during the Canadian Finals Rodeo (CFR), and in 2016 and 2017, he returned to the CFR for Open Bronc Riding.
Years passed. And then, it was the Fall of 2021.
Lane, a new father, had just welcomed his first child, Kori, to the family. After wrapping up his regular season, he was participating in a practice in Rimbey when a quick turn of events with his horse changed his life in an instant.
Lane was in an accident. Eerily similar to his brother’s, he suffered a severe spinal cord injury resulting in incomplete paralysis. And back to the Glenrose he was, this time for his own rehabilitation.
For four months, Lane worked his upper and lower body to regain lost strength and mobility. He spent his days in-and-out of treatments, including physical, occupational, and recreational therapies.
His progress was gradual, moving from a wheelchair to a walker, to supportive walking using a harness and rail. He was fitted with an ankle foot orthosis (AFO) by the Glenrose’s orthotics department, which supported him in correcting his foot and ankle position.
“Any resource that I needed (at the Glenrose) was available. Between having help with paperwork, social work, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and others, they all came together to get me on my way back home and back on my feet,” says Lane.
Today, while he’s no longer able to ride, Lane remains an active member in the rodeo community, putting on a few saddle bronc match fundraisers of his own.
“Meeting so many other people with tougher journeys or similar stories and getting strength and encouragement from others that were battling as hard as they could to reach their goals, helped me reach mine. To have the Glenrose, it’s been huge to my family. It did a lot for my brother, and it did a lot for me.”
Support the excellence in rehabilitation healthcare that helped rodeo brothers, Ryan and Lane, get back on their feet with a donation to the Glenrose Hospital Foundation today.
