Topeka ? Being a rodeo clown is serious business.

The job is dangerous and requires athletic ability, said Damon Rogers, a rodeo clown who performed at the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn. Championship Rodeo in late January at the Kansas Expocentre.

“My primary responsibility is entertainment and filling the dead space,” Rogers said. “I have a secondary responsibility as a cowboy protector.”

He keeps a sign on the wall of his home in Austin, Texas, that reads, “Spectacular success is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” Rogers said the public doesn’t see the hours of preparation that Olympic athletes put into achieving a gold medal, much like how they don’t see the hard work that goes into being a rodeo clown.

“My gold medal is some guy laughing,” he said. “For all I know, he might be two months behind on his mortgage, his wife might have just left him, his kids might be on drugs or he might be having behavior problems, but right now, in this moment of time, he’s laughing and having a good time.”

Although his main task is humor, Rogers also is a trained bullfighter. The bullfighters are the first source for saving a troubled cowboy during a bull-riding event.

“It is my job to protect the cowboy at all costs,” said bullfighter Allan Dessel, of Cherokee, Iowa.

Dessel and Jesse Griffin, of Cody, Wyo., are bullfighters at the rodeo, which was expected to draw about 300 competitors for bareback riding, steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, barrel racing and bull riding.

The bullfighters only stay in the arena during the bull-riding competition. Their job is to direct the bull’s attention away from the cowboy after he has been bucked off. If a cowboy is caught in the rope, the bullfighters help free him from the bull.

“If you think about the bull’s size or what could go wrong, if you think about it before you’re in the arena, you’re already beat,” Dessel said.

A bull stepped on Dessel’s leg at a rodeo in Sioux Falls, S.D., breaking it and putting him out of the show for at least four weeks. He said bumps and bruises are just part of the job.

Rodeo clown Damon Rogers, of Austin, Texas, paints on his face shortly before the beginning of a rodeo. Roger was in Topeka Jan. 23 for a rodeo at the Kansas Expocentre.

“It’s going to happen,” he said. “You just hope it’s not too serious.”

Dessel and Rogers grew up in the rodeo business, the sons of rodeo veterans. Both men also want to dispel Hollywood stereotypes of rodeo clowns and bullfighters as drunken, uneducated retired cowboys.

Dessel spends his summers traveling to rodeos, but when he isn’t on the road, he is earning a physics degree from Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, where he maintains a 3.5 grade-point average.

Rogers tries to educate people about the training and hard work that goes into the job.

“I think we can entertain the MTV generation, as well as the country listeners,” Rogers said. “It is the original extreme sport.”

Rodeo clown Damon Rogers drags Cade Minnick, 10, of Leon, to toss him on top of his younger brother, Cooper, 6, as the two boys play dead to help Rodgers with a skit during a rodeo at the Kansas Expocentre in Topeka.