ProRodeo Sports News -- May 24, 2024

TIME CAPSULE PAUL CARNEY Colorado Pioneer

Paul Carney is among the all-time greats

BY PRCA STAFF P aul Carney, a three-time world champion who retired from the sport at age 27, was tagged with the nickname “Shanks.” He was credited with being the first man to discover that bending the shanks of his spurs in and down would help keep contact with a bucking animal. Roughstock spurs have been designed that way ever since. Carney was more than innovative – he was one talented cowboy who was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2001. The 6-foot, 180-pounder competed in bull riding, bareback riding, saddle bronc riding and steer wrestling. He won the bareback riding world championship in 1937 and again in 1939, while also capturing the world all-around title in ’39. In 1938, he held the lead in the all-around and was high in the standings in bareback riding and saddle bronc riding before suffering an injury that knocked him out of competition for the rest of the year. Carney was proud to be from the small northeastern Colorado town of Galeton, where he was born Sept. 21, 1912. Carney entered his first rodeo at age 15 in Greeley, Colo., and took second in the amateur saddle bronc riding at Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days the next year. He was hooked on rodeo at that point. He competed in London’s White City Stadium – built for the 1908 Olympics – in 1934. His first big rodeo triumph came in 1936 when he won the bull riding in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

PRCA ProRodeo file photo Paul Carney was a Cowboys’ Turtle Association World Champion Bareback Rider in 1937 and 1939 and the All-Around World Champion in 1939. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2001.

prime of his career. She was the widow of Cecil Kennedy, who had been killed the year before in a saddle bronc riding accident in Rocky Ford, Colo. Urged by his father and his wife, Carney retired after his greatest year to operate a dude ranch and cattle business in Arizona. In 1946, he formed the Carney Construction Company, specializing in road construction. While working on a construction project near the Grand Canyon in 1950, he died in his sleep from a heart attack. He was only 37.

In 1937, he won the bull riding and saddle bronc riding and was second in the bareback riding at Madison Square Garden. Tall, handsome and easy-going, Carney was popular with his peers and a natural leader who garnered some early endorsement deals. He was actively involved in the early Cowboy Turtles’ Association (forerunner of the PRCA) and held card No. 21 while also serving on the board as the bull riding representative. In 1939, he married Lillian Kennedy while in the

ProRodeo Sports News 5/24/2024

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