Marty Wood

Who is Marty Wood?

Martin Roy Wood is a celebrated rodeo cowboy from Bowness, Calgary, in the province of Alberta, Canada.

Marty was born in 1933 in Carstairs, Alberta, to Dorothy and Harry Wood. His great grandfather was Henry Wise Wood, the founding president of the United Farmers of Alberta, who had settled in Carstairs in 1905. Marty's family moved to Bowness, then a small hamlet just outside of Calgary, in 1940 or 1941, and he attended school there. His parents built a house and opened the Wood's Riding Academy, where Marty learned to break, ride and show horses. He took up rodeo in the early 1950s and soon specialized in Saddle broncs. He won his first professional rodeo championship in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1953.

During the fifties and sixties, Wood was one of the best Saddle Bronc riders in the United States and Canada, winning at all the major rodeos and, when he didn't win outright, often coming in a close second. He was Canadian Champion Saddle Bronc Rider in 1954, 1955 and 1963, World Champion in 1958, 1964 and 1966, and won the Calgary Stampede a total of five times, in 1954, 1957, 1961, 1964 and 1965.