Eighth-grader Chaney Akin of Cody didn’t just dominate the National Junior High Finals Rodeo last week on her diminutive – but nationally famous – horse in Guthrie, Oklahoma.
Akin won the pole bending aggregate by almost a full second and capped the week by taking home All Around Cowgirl honors to rake in nearly $6,000.
Akin’s time of 19.60 seconds in the first round Tuesday morning – thought to be a Lazy E Arena record – came aboard her 19-year-old former trail-riding mare officially named Chick's Keen O Pocopoo but known affectionately by the family as “the little Paint donkey.”
“That was my fastest run ever in the poles,” said Akin, who had been awake all through the previous night thanks to tornado-related evacuations. “When I first looked at the scoreboard, I thought it said 19.9. But then I heard everyone screaming.”
The NJHFR drew more than 1,200 contestants from 40 states and six countries. Akin also finished 16th in barrel racing, on a gelding she trained, to secure the coveted All-Around Cowgirl award and lead the Wyoming girls to fourth in the team standings.
Two of the only other four sub-20.00 runs were posted by Casper’s Lanai Garnhart and Gillette’s Bella Moore. Garnhart finished second and 11-year-old Tinlee Thompson of Yoder third in the All Around Rookie Cowgirl standings behind a girl from Mexico.
The Famous Horse
It was Akin’s first NJHFR qualification, but her horse was already famous.
“Paint” became a rodeo Cinderella story in 2020 when Akin's mother, Brittney Sporer, took her all the way to the National Finals Rodeo in barrel racing despite the mare’s diminutive size and cowhorse breeding.
Many of the sport’s top fans didn’t realize at first that Akin was riding the same Paint. But the mare is distinctive.
She stands barely 14 hands tall and has such a narrow rear end that saddles must be custom-made. She got her wild red-and-white color from her sire, Mr. Dominator, and she’s out of a granddaughter of cowhorse legend Smart Chic Olena.
She also has had cancer in one eye.
“She doesn't know she's 19,” Sporer wrote of Paint on Facebook after her daughter’s world titles. “She doesn't know how many miles she's traveled or how many memories she's made. She just knows she gets to load in the trailer and go somewhere with us to do the jobs she loves.”
Sporer grew up in Bakersfield, California, where she was sent Paint in 2016 for barrel-racing training when the mare was already 9. The duo made the California Circuit Finals Rodeo twice, and Sporer bought her along when she moved to Stephenville, Texas.
Since marrying Cody native Sid Sporer in 2022, she’s also made the Montana Circuit Finals twice on Paint. She said Paint has earned more than $300,000 running barrels.
“I did not like her at first,” Akin said of her mother’s rough-riding mare. “I hit a lot of barrels on her and don’t have much confidence on her in that event.”
But once the duo began winning at the poles, she’s decided she loves competing on Paint. Bending through all six poles six times at the NJHFR without a penalty for knocking one over is quite a feat.
“You just have to use your feet and not pull on her reins,” Akin said. “In the second round, I was a little handsy and had a 20.1. She lined out, after that.”
The NJHFR venue is smack in Tornado Alley. Last week, hundreds of families spent half of two nights evacuating horses from stalls and sheltering in the arena.
“The group of people who rodeo in Wyoming are amazing,” Sporer said. “One of the dads ran around to all of the trailers knocking to wake us up, and said, ‘We’ve got to go; there’s a tornado; we’ve got to get to the barn’. We hadn’t even gotten warnings on our phones. We loped our horses bareback up to the arena and sheltered for almost two hours.”
Back To Cody
As of Monday, mother and daughter were eager to get home by July 2, when Sid Sporer is scheduled to compete in team roping at his big hometown rodeo in Cody.
Brittney Sporer admitted she and her daughter have started training all of his roping horses on the poles. He might not get them back, she joked.
However, Akin owes him.
“After I made the NFR, I was over rodeo,” Brittney recalled. “At the time, I told my husband I was going to sell my horses. He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ Well, I texted him yesterday and said, ‘Thank you for not letting me sell my horse.’”
She said Akin, a home-schooled 14-year-old, has enjoyed living in Wyoming the past five or six years.
“She loves Wyoming, and the parents and the kids here are just amazing,” said Brittney, who still has a house in Texas and goes there “when it snows.” That’s why Chaney has decided to compete for the Cowboy State next year as a high school freshman.
“Ever since we left Texas, people were saying it was because the rodeos in Wyoming would be easier to win,” she said. “But all four Wyoming girls made the NJHFR short round in barrels. So, that is not the case. We went to Wyoming because it’s harder to qualify. In Texas, the qualifiers are whoever does well one day.”
And by now, winning the NJHFR has become a stepping stone for many of today’s top pro rodeo contenders.
None could say they won the world title on as unlikely a horse as Paint.
In fact, Brittney loves Paint so much she bought her dam as well, and is now training two half-brothers, including a 6-year-old Wyoming stallion Casino Heist. Plus, she has three babies from Paint, including a 3-year-old stallion by Wyoming’s top-producing barrel-racing sire Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.
The rarity is not just that Paint is a winner, Brittney said. It’s that she’s still sound and still winning after a million miles, through 10 years of racing and cancer.
“We have ridden her in an English saddle and jumped her,” she said, noting she once turned down a blank check to sell Paint. “She literally will do anything. She’s a special mare.”
Now ridden by a world champion eighth-grader.