Two-time NFR tie-down roper Clay Cerny announced he’s back in the rope horse business in a big way in Ardmore, Oklahoma, winning the main average, intermediate average and stallion incentive in the Gold Buckle 6-&-Under Tie-Down Roping Maturity on Pete and Tori Branches’ Conrey Kitty, worth $34,000.
“I got this horse in January,” Cerny said. “He’s won money in the cutting, and he made super-fast. He’s only been to one little jackpot. He’s green, but he’s a good horse.”
Other than not liking Cerny coiling his rope back up, Conrey Kitty has taken to the calf roping like a fish to water.
“He can run, but his biggest strength is his mind,” Cerny said. “Nothing rattles him. The whole time training him, you show him something, and he’s got it.”
Full Results Gold Buckle Futurities Spring Event
Cerny had gone to training mostly cutting horses back in 2010. But with the explosive growth of opportunity on the futurity side of the rope horse business, he sent all of his cutting customers home after last December’s NCHA Futurity in favor of calf horses.
“It’s hard to find help where we live,” Cerny explained. “When my daughter graduates and goes off to college, it will be my wife Jodie and I. We’re trying to do something that doesn’t take so much help. I trained rope horses my whole life, quit in 2010, went to cutting. We trained rope horses back then, just she and I, so maybe we can do it again. The Gold Buckle deal, I’m super pumped with the way they ran it and everything about it.”
