Page 140 - January 2017

by Jennifer K. Hancock
What was a hobby for a ski instructor turned into a successful career of training Champion race horses, and now after four decades of conditioning some of the sport’s fastest runners, Dennis “Denny” Ekins is retiring to Montana to become a full-time grandfather. Ekins grew up around horses, but he
wasn’t involved with racing until some friends introduced him to chariot racing.
“I was very lucky,” Ekins said of his change of careers. “I was extremely lucky to get into it the way that I did. I was a snow ski instructor in Utah prior to this. After we had been involved with the chariot racing with a couple of good friends of mine in Utah, we decided that we wanted a couple of 2-year-olds to try to run.”
When it came time for the 2 year olds to head to the track, ski season was wrapping up and Ekins was nominated as the group’s trainer.
“We took them to Kennewick, Washington, and pursued their racing careers and mine,” Ekins recalled. “What happened from then on just snowballed for me. We got lucky, and we did a little good with the horses that we had that year and qualified for some futurities and stuff. Then, I elected from there on to go on and train horses. I had some people get behind me a little bit and it worked out well.”
After a couple of years, Ekins went to work for Sunset Canyon Ranch in southern Utah.
“I worked for them for about two years, and we had some horses from the ranch and they sent me to California with their horses,” Ekins said. “We had a really good filly by the name of Silvertown, and she qualified for some derbies, so I stayed here a couple of years.”
When the ranch wanted Ekins to return to Utah, he asked to stay in the Golden State.
“They told me that I could, so I stayed at Los Alamitos with one horse and started my career there,” he said. “And now I’m retiring.”
Now 70, Ekins is ending his training career as the eighth all-time leading conditioner at Los Alamitos Race Course with 1,054 Quarter Horse wins at the Orange County oval. According to AQHA official records, Ekins has saddled 11,707 runners and won 1,274 races including 31 stakes races. He ends his career with $13,899,307 in earnings.
This spring, Ekins and his wife, Vandi, plan to relocate to Montana to spend more time with their family, including son Robbie, his wife and their daughter, Sawyer.
“I’ve been at this an awful long time, and I’ve been at Los Alamitos Race Course 42 years,” Ekins said. “Prior to that, I was training throughout the Intermountain area for another seven or eight years. It’s about time, but the main reason for my retirement is that my wife and I have a son who lives in Montana and he’s married and he’s blessed us with a lovely, wonderful granddaughter. She’s
now 4 and coming 5 and we’ve decided that we need to go be a big part of her life instead of a couple times a year. That’s the number one reason for my retirement. We have a home in Montana now, and we want to get moved up there in the next couple of months and start being grandparents.”
Ekins’ top trainees included Muller Racing’s millionaire and multiple AQHA Champion Ocean Runaway, Legacy Ranch’s 2010 AQHA Champion 2-Year-Old Filly Flying Fig, Muller Racing’s 2003 AQHA Distance Champion Sterling Sport, David J. Payne’s 1983 AQHA Champion 2-Year-Old Colt Tolltac, and multiple major futurity winner Finding Nemo. Ekins also saddled World Champion Cold Cash 123 to victory in the 2012 Go Man Go Handicap. Other of his top stakes winners over the years include Not For Long, Waverino, and Tolls Touch.
“I’ve been very, very fortunate because I’ve
had some great horses,” Ekins said. “We’ve had several divisional champions through AQHA over the years. I don’t know if you can pick one that’s better than the rest. Each one of them has done such a great thing at their time and at their level. One tremendous horse that we had was Ocean Runaway. He was a divisional champion two years inarowasa2yearoldanda3yearold.Hewon some major stakes races, and he was a tremendous athlete and individual. We had a tremendous
138 SPEEDHORSE, January 2017