Page 69 - 2020 Stallion Register

The Silver Lining
Fred Danley’s journey from the basketball courttothebackside byPeteHerrera
Sometimes an error in judgement comes wrapped with a silver lining.
Today, Fred Danley is unquestionably
one of the most recognizable and respected horsemen in New Mexico’s horse racing circuit. The 77-year-old New Mexico native
has been training Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds for nearly 60 years and has
won countless races--from the claiming ranks to stakes races--with both breeds.
His enduring success reached a new pinnacle this year with his win in the All American Derby with the 3-year-old mare Rusty’s Miracle. And at an age when most folks have
a firm grip on retirement, Fred Danley goes to work every day well before sun up.
But consider how Danley’s journey to where he is today got started.
Danley was a 14-year-old high school freshman at Phoenix, Arizona’s Sunnyslope High School in the fall of 1956. His forte back then was on a basketball court, not the backside of a racetrack. He was a good enough player that he was getting some serious recruiting looks from the coaching staff at nearby Arizona State University.
Danley was a hard-nosed young athlete with a God-given talent to score points with his aggressiveness on the court.
But young Fred also had an impetuous streak, with a temper to match.
“Back then, I was kind of bad about fighting,” says Danley. “I didn’t take much off of anybody.”
Not even his basketball coach.
One day during a practice session, the coach got on Fred’s case. Fred felt he was being singled out from the other players and didn’t like it.
“We were clowning around and he got on me. He wasn’t getting on the rest of ‘em and that made me mad,” says Fred.
One thing led to another and in one of those can’t-take-it-back moments, Fred took a swing at the coach. The punch apparently hit the target because that was the end of Fred’s career as a student athlete.
“They quit me,” says Fred, recalling how he was expelled that day.
Out of school and out of options, Fred went to work at the racetrack for his dad, Ike Danley. Ike Danley had started out as a construction worker but had turned to training racehorses by the time Fred was in elementary school.
That spring, Fred joined his dad’s stable at Ruidoso Downs and when Ike decided to take some of his Thoroughbreds to Omaha to race at Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack, he left Fred in charge of their barn at Ruidoso.
“I just about froze to death,” says Fred of that first Spring at the track in the Sacramento Mountains. “I had heat lamps on the bed and everything else trying to keep warm.”
It was a tough introduction to the next chapter in Fred’s life.
Over the next three years, Fred worked under his dad as a groom. He did it all around Ike’s barn, from cleaning stalls to galloping horses. When Fred turned 18, he got his trainer’s license and Ike turned over his barn at Ruidoso to his son.
Fred had nine horses when he started
training on his own and success came quickly.
In the summer of 1963, Fred had a 2-year-old
colt named Mr Tinky Bar. Owned by the Lee brothers--Bob and Sato--from Alamogordo, N.M., Mr Tinky Bar won the Kansas Futurity (now the Ruidoso Futurity) in early June that year.
Fred was 20 years old when Mr Tinky Bar won the Kansas Futurity and that made him the youngest trainer ever to win that futurity.
But since there’s no sure thing in horse racing, Danley later that summer was replaced with another trainer by the owners of Mr Tinky Bar. The colt went on to run second behind Goetta in that year’s All American Futurity.
“They took him to Buffalo Wooten,” says Fred of the owners’ decision to change trainers. “They thought I was too young to run in the All American.”
Apparently that was a rash and poorly founded conclusion because the next year (1964) a still very young Fred was good enough to train Merry Go, which qualified for the All American and ran third in the finals behind winner Decketta.
From 1983 to 2007, Fred trained four more All American Futurity qualifiers. They were: On A Stormy Day (1983); Ima Royal Winner (2000); Gun Battle, the second place finisher to No Secrets Here in 2006 and Strong Hope (2007).
Ike Danley also had an All American finalist with Deacon’s Luck in 1967.
It was during his early years in Ruidoso that Fred met Rita Hodges, a young woman working at the track’s kitchen. The couple
WINTER 2019 67