Horse Racing: Dollars for Quarters

HORSE RACING

To most dyed-in-the-silks thoroughbred fans, quarter-horse racing is not horse racing at all. When it comes to purity of breeding, the quarter-horse wins no prizes; a chunky, bandy-legged brute, it looks almost grotesque next to the sleek, stately thoroughbred. Besides, what railbird wants to bother with a race that covers only 350 to 550 yds. and is over before he can focus his binoculars? The answer is the 2,000,000 quarter-horse devotees who showed up at 100 tracks in 26 states last year to watch the husky hybrids dash to photo finish after photo finish.

For compact action, nothing quite compares with quarter-horse racing. A horse that covers 350 yds. in 18 sec. is likely to win, while a horse that finishes only one second later can be dead last. And big money rides on every split second. Pari-mutuel betting is now permitted in 13 states, and last year’s total handle was $78,328,686. In that same period, purse money increased from $1,752,256 to $6,984,558. Dollar for distance, it is the richest racing in the world.

Whup ’em or Weep. Most of that money was gouged from the hard-baked Western soil in which the sport has its roots. A cross between the pioneer plow horse and the Mexican mustang, the quarter horse was bred for the short bursts of speed needed to herd cattle. To fill the lonesome hours, cowpokes began match-racing for payday stakes and, as one oldtimer put it, “if you couldn’t whup the guy you beat, you didn’t get your money.” Before long, horsemen were organizing races at state and county fairs across the West. Whole herds of cattle were common stakes, and more than one ranch changed hands after a head-to-head race.

For all that, the quarter horse remained a no-account critter until 1941, when the American Quarter Horse Association was formed to legitimize the breed. Since then, more than 500,000 quarter horses have been registered in the U.S., and many of the racers among them work in plush surroundings. California’s Los Alamitos Race Course, a $15 million complex 35 miles south of Los Angeles, was built in 1947 by Frank Vessels Jr. and his late father on the site of a former beet farm. Los Alamitos drew 457,080 fans last year and attendance is up 30% this year. It pays better than beets, too: close to $750,000 a night passes through Los Alamitos’ parimutuel windows.

The biggest quarter-horse race of all is the annual Ail-American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs, N. Mex. Come Labor Day, some 10,000 bona fide and drugstore cowboys—along with doctors, lawyers and oil-rich Indian chiefs—will turn out to see the tenth running of the 400-yard event billed as the “World’s Richest Horse Race.” Prize money for this year’s Futurity is $615,000, nearly four times the size of the purse offered at the Kentucky Derby.