Page 48 - July_2023

SPEEDLINES
“Leo was something eLse, he was the most muscuLar horse i had ever seen to this day. he Looked Like a wrestLer,”
Champion sire Leo, which started Bud Warren on the road to success as a
Quarter Horse breeder. 2-time Champion Palleo Pete, sired by Leo.
46 SPEEDHORSE July 2023
“We Wrote the first Quarter horse futurity in the united states. i Was secretary of the oklahoma Quarter horse Breeders association, and i Wrote the conditions for it, and it Was at 220 yards.” -Bud Warren
Quarter Horse racing when he interjected this, “This reminds me of an old story. When they first started running 3/8ths
of a mile over in Arkansas and around in this country, the favorite thing was to use refined type Thoroughbred studs on blocky stout powerful mares to get the 3/8th of a mile horses or quarter mile horses, which eventually ended up being the short speed horses we had in those days. They were by
a refined Thoroughbred stud and a lot of them were probably a small Thoroughbred stud and a big blocky type of mare. The old timers would hide a big old stout mare and breed her to a classy Thoroughbred stud. And the foals would just run off from all of them at shorter distances. That was common practice, and I remember some of the old men that talked about it.”
Our conversation about Three Bars and Top Deck continued about hybrid vigor, the genetic phenomenon that produces
a foal superior to the sire and dam when they are not related. “Hybrid vigor was a favorite subject in our time,” said Warren. “Everybody talked about it, and nobody knew much about it, except what some
of the beef breeds and what some of the colleges put out on the value of hybrid vigor with crossbreeding cattle. It just
seemed to follow through and prove itself in those days.”
The discussion of hybrid vigor tied into the original story on the formation of “short horse” racing. Warren said this, “The biggest thing we were getting out of a Thoroughbred was a different kind of horse, but a different bloodline crossed to a different type of horse that the old settlers had and that is all they had. They had to have something to plow with, pull a buggy and take produce to town. So, on Sunday it is the old story that they didn’t have anything else to do, so they had horse races down the main street of the town.”
Warren’s recollections of short horse racing moved into the futurities we have today. He recalled the origin of the Quarter Horse two-year-old stakes races this way. “We wrote the first Quarter Horse futurity
in the United States. I was secretary of
the Oklahoma Quarter Horse Breeders Association, and I wrote the conditions for it, and it was at 220 yards. It was the forerunner of all of them. Then we gradually moved it up and as time progressed some of them got to be a quarter of a mile. Back then it was hard to fill a 440-yard race at Eagle Pass or Del Rio. They all wanted to run 220, 300 or 350.”
The description Warren provides of Leo gives us an understanding of what these
short horses were and what he is talking about. “Leo was something else, he was
the most muscular horse I had ever seen
to this day. He looked like a wrestler,” Warren said. “He looked like he could whip any stud you turn in the lot with him. He was so muscular he looked like a weightlifter. Just powerful all over and he was not Thoroughbred looking, although he was high headed with a real high wither. It would knock your eye out to look at him, he looked like a musk hog, a big
bear walking around. He didn’t look like
a Thoroughbred at all, but he had blinding speed and power and that combined with some of the refinements of the Thoroughbred made great short running horses. Of course, in those days we didn’t run very far as 300 yards was a pretty good distance.”
When Warren bought Leo, he started on the road to success as a breeder of running Quarter Horses. He found himself in the middle of Quarter Horse racing as his stallion became a leading sire with his foals earning accolades on the track. His runners earned 211 ROM with 31 stakes winners, 33 stakes placed runners and earnings of $605,882. He sired Champions like Miss Meyers, Palleo Pete, Bobbie Leo and Mona Leta.
© Speedhorse archives
© Speedhorse archives