The 1965 Girls Rodeo Association World Champion Barrel Racer Sammy Fancher Thurman Brackenbury passed away Christmas Day 2024 at her home in California, two weeks after her 91st birthday.
Brackenbury was a force of nature from the start. Born in Wickieup, Arizona, she was named after her father, PRCA cowboy Sam Fancher. Determined to follow in his footsteps as a cowboy, she started gentling mustangs as a 7-year-old.
“I’d take the yearlings and get them broke to ride and we’d sell them to the kids around there,” Brackenbury said in a 2019 interview.
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She rodeoed alongside her father, match racing, calf riding and roping—always competing against the men because there were no all-girl rodeos nearby.
Barrel racing in the GRA was still in its infancy and located mostly in Texas and Oklahoma. Still, Brackenbury patterned her rope horses and was ready when the event spread west, qualifying to her first National Finals Barrel Racing in 1960.
Still considering herself more of a roper than a barrel racer, Brackenbury helped break roping’s glass ceiling—with the help of her dad and then-Rodeo Cowboys Association Secretary Bill Linderman—when she team roped with her father at the Santa Maria, California, RCA rodeo. Linderman granted an exception to RCA’s rules against women competing so Brackenbury could fill in for her father’s missing partner. The duo competed across California, even taking second in a round at the California Rodeo Salinas.
Years later, Brackenbury’s example inspired Kathy (Kauzlarich) Salisbury to become one of the first women to fill a permit in the PRCA. In a 2023 interview, Salisbury said, “That’s who I saw and she opened the door.”
Brackenbury also had a few acting roles in movies but set that aside to rodeo, ultimately qualifying for 12 NFRs (competing in 11) including the 1967 NFR, the first to include barrel racing.
“We were happy to finally be with the rest of the events,” Thurman said in a 2018 interview. “All you had to do was listen to the people clap their hands during the barrel race to know [it] was popular with the crowds.”
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Her colorful life included seven husbands, three daughters and three step-kids, and a final career change back to the movie business—this time as a stunt woman.
She was also one of the earliest barrel racing clinicians, designed saddles, served several years on the GRA Board and became a charter member of the United Stuntwomen’s Association, doubling for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
“We were already working under the men’s association,” Brackenbury, one of the group’s earliest presidents, said. “But it brought us front and center.”
After 30 years of competing and winning nearly every major rodeo, Brackenbury was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2012 and the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2019.
—TRJ—
