Dollar for Distance
The holiday crowd of 6,500 looked as if it had been ordered from general casting by the director of a western movie. At the mile-high, five-furlong race track near Ruidoso, N. Mex., wizened Texas cowpokes in shrunken Levi's clutched $100 bills while they hunted for the parimutuel windows. Dark-faced Apache youths in blue jeans lined up along the rail reading their racing forms. Oklahoma oilmen in neatly tailored riding pants shared tacos and tamales with their Dior dressed wives. Track police sported Stetsons and packed six-guns, consciously copying the deputy marshals who ruled the tiny (pop. 2,500) town in the bad old days when Billy the Kid roamed the nearby Sacramento Mountains. The race that put Ruidoso Downs on the prod was last week's running of the 400-yd., $202,425 All-American Futurity--Kentucky Derby of quarterhorse racing and, dollar for distance, the richest horse race in the world.*
No saddle-sore cowpoke would walk half a block to watch a race between thoroughbreds--skittish, no-account critters that can't do anything but run. But for the chunky, docile quarterhorse, the cowboy has the fond attachment of a co-worker and friend. Bred for blazing speed over extremely short (up to 870 yd.) distances, today's racing quarterhorse is a blood brother of rugged, hard-working range horses. Match races for high stakes have been common ever since the first quarterhorses were broken, and more than one thoroughbred owner has been parted from his bankroll by a glib Texan with a fast-striding cow pony. "I can remember them betting suitcases of cash around Houston," recalled one oldtimer.
By the time the betting windows closed for the All-American Futurity, a record $50,700 had been pumped into Ruidoso Downs' parimutuel machines, and the crowd's choices were a pair of California entries, Bunny's Bar Maid (2-5) and Golden Note (9-2). But when the ten-horse field broke from the gate for the breakneck straightaway dash to the wire, both favorites were left at the post, hopelessly beaten--for it is at the start, with jockeys flailing and horses driving hard, that quarterhorse races are won. Winner by a remarkable 1 1/2 lengths was a lightly regarded chestnut colt named Pokey Bar, who shrugged off a 4-m.p.h. headwind and streaked across the dinky course in a record 20.1 sec. Pokey Bar returned $17.80 on a $2 win ticket, earned Owner Hugh Huntley of Madera, Calif., his.second All-American victory in three years, and the fat first-place purse of $101,213.
* Topped in total purse only by Illinois' $211,750 Arlington Futurity and $213,750 Washington Park Futurity, and New Jersey's $287,970 Garden State Stakes, all of which are thoroughbred races run at distances ranging from six furlongs to 1 1/16 miles.
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