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Pacific Bars winning the 1962 Los Ninos Handicap at Los Alamitos.
Counterplay and his connections after winning the Connie Reb winning the 1965 Moon Deck – Theta Chi Epsilon Purse at Los Alamitos. 1967 Bright Eyes Special Stakes at Ruidoso Downs.
SPEEDLINES
SPEEDHORSE July 2023 51
continued. “I had the best of the Quarter Horse world. I had a horse
in Sugar Bars that was recognized as
a great speed bloodline because of the early success of Three Bars on Quarter mares, number one. Number two, he had the looks of the greatest of the show horse winners that the show horse lead and feed people wanted. And number three, the cowboys wanted a horse that looked like a Quarter Horse and was
fast like a runnin’ horse. They were ideal as rope horses and cutting horses and everything else. There I was right in the middle with Sugar Bars and Leo that just dominated the horse industry, in my opinion, at that time. And I guess there is enough success from everybody else that had them to prove it.”
Sugar Bars proved to be a sire of horses that excelled at a variety of events. He sired horses that earned arena ROM’s as well as Superior Awards in halter and performance, not to mention high point award winners. He sired 139 racing ROM with nine stakes winners and 19 stakes placed runners. His runners earned $378,081.
When we look at the nine stakes winners, we see that five were out of daughters of Leo. These runners start
with Pacific Bars, winner of the 1962 Los Ninos Handicap and he was out of South Pacific, a Leo daughter that was out of Randles Lady. Connie Reb was the winner of the 1965 Moon Deck Stakes, and he was out of Connie Leo by Leo and Connie Leo was out of Connie. Counterplay was the winner of 1967 Bright Eyes Stakes, and he was out of Rosa Leo by Leo and Rosa Leo was out of Randles Lady. These three stakes horse have ties to the Warren broodmare band through Leo and his foundation mares. Sugarcita was the winner of the Rocky Mountain QHA Futurity, and she was out of Oncita by
or at least she was registered as foaled in 1943. Eagle contends that these kinds
of errors were common in the early stud book and that they were mistakes made because of a lack of records kept by horsemen. Eagle tells us that horsemen
of this era relied on performance instead of pedigree to select their breeding stock and that this led to lapses in memory that resulted in errors in the pedigrees.
Eagle gives us the pedigree of the Dun Mare as follows. The Dun Mare (Palomino D.O.) was sired by a son of Ben Hur. The stud book gives the sire of the Dun Mare as Ben Hur, not a son of Ben Hur. Eagle’s research found that Reynolds never owned a direct daughter of Ben Hur, but did own several granddaughters of Ben Hur.
According to Eagle, there were two sons of Ben Hur that could have sired the Dun Mare. Eagle felt that the Ben Hur horse
he considered the sire of the Dun Mare (Palomino DO) was a son of Ben Hur out of an Ace Of Hearts mare. The other Ben Hur stud was out of a Thoroughbred mare that was given away by O. C. Dowe, the breeder of the Dun Mare. Ace Of Hearts was by the Dunderstadt Horse by Old Sykes Rondo. Ace Of Hearts’ dam was Queen by Dedier. This is some more of that South Texas Billy blood and some Cajun- Bred Running Horse blood.
The Dun Mare was out of a mare called the Reynolds Brothers Mare. Her
breeding was unknown, and she was owned by O.C. Dowe, the breeder of Palomino D.O. The Reynolds Brothers listed as the breeders of this mare were not related to Pete Reynolds. The Reynolds Brothers owned the X Ranch at Kent, Texas.
Warren explained what he needed to do to get mares bred to Sugar Bars. “I was looking for another stud and I knew whatever I got I had to promote him, and I bought an ad in every magazine from California to the east coast to Montana and everywhere to advertise him. I had photographers from all over the country to take pictures of him and I got Orren Mixer to paint a picture of him. I got some good pictures and that is what sold the horse in those days.”
“He was just an ordinary racehorse. He was a good one, but not the greatest, but faster than most of them,” he said. “We just kept pushing him and we got
a lot of mares from around the country and even Mexico and Australia. He got real popular. He was a Three Bars, a AAA racehorse, beautiful chestnut sorrel and everybody that saw him fell in love with him. He was one of those horses and there weren’t too many of them and that is all there was to it. Having the right horse at the right time.
“That started him, and I had ole Leo, the two crossed together,” Warren
stakes Winners By sugar Bars and out of dams By leo include . . .
© Bill Scherlis © Los Alamitos
© Ruidoso Downs