Page 48 - August 2019

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E
ohn Cooper has mastered the art of THEIR EARLY YEARS in high school and I was in eighth grade,” she the understatement as well as the art of John grew up one of four children, the says. “We both had a horse, so that was that.
training great racehorses. Asked to name his biggest success, he concludes simply, “Horses. I’ve had a good run.”
son of Clarence “Slick” and Leone Cooper in Pocatello, Idaho, where Slick had a little sand and gravel hauling business. “Those were the days when you had to shovel it on by hand!” Carol says.
Carol also grew up in Pocatello, the daughter of Robert and Sarah Scott. Robert wrestled steers and brought the first Quarter Horse to the state of Idaho: Coon Dog II, who bucked Carol off and broke her arm. “We always had a good horse to ride,” Carol says. “I broke a lot of bones, but I never quit loving them.”
John also loved horses. “When I met John, he had a palomino gelding and when his father sold him, it broke his heart.” Carol says.
Carol first saw John when she was in junior high. “He had the lead role in an operetta and we’d also see each other at the roller staking rink, but I didn’t meet him until he was a freshman
We went horseback riding and we both liked to dance. We’ve been together since 1953.”
They married in 1956 and had two children, a daughter, Michele, who sells real estate with Carol, and a son, Scott, a long-haul trucker who passed away in 2004.
When they’d been married a year or so, they got a gray gelding, then a mare, and Carol’s dad taught John how to rope. Carol ran barrels and showed in halter. In 1960 they bought a horse named Cutback, whom John began showing
in performance, roping calves. Cutback was followed by Reed’s Honey, a mare who earned several halter grand championships under Carol’s hand. “In fact, we met Jay and Polly Parsons at a horse show in Big Piney, Wyoming,” Carol says. “They were showing a mare named Wayward Cindy and she was grand champion, and our mare was reserve champion.”
“He’s not one to toot his own horn,” says his wife, Carol. But during the course of his 50-plus-year training career, he has
fit five AQHA Champions: Chingaderos, Moonist, Mr Doty Bars, Separatist and
Sign Of Lanty. He also conditioned World Champion Tiny’s Gay through his first three wins during a career in which the stallion was unbeaten until a second-place finish
in his 13th and final race: the 1974 All American Futurity.
The Cooper roster also includes Uncle Wes, whom Carol calls one of the best 870 horses on the grounds in 1970 and 1971, and Aladuino, earner of nearly half a million dollars back in the 1980s.
46 SPEEDHORSE, August 2019