Page 70 - 2020 Stallion Register

married in September 1964. Fred was 22 and Rita was two months shy of her 18th birthday.
Together, Fred and Rita, who passed away in August of 2014 from cancer, built a lucrative breeding and racing operation that produced consistent winners at the track and a stable of broodmares whose offspring went on to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars during their racing careers.
One of those broodmares is Happy Me,
a stakes-winner who produced multiple top runners, including four fillies that during their racing years all earned over $200,000.
“In fact,” says Fred. “they made enough to pay off the farm (at Anthony, N.M.) and we bought the ranch between Capitan and Roswell. When Rita passed away, everything was paid for. We had no debts at all.”
“I knew Rita and respected them a lot,” says Kim Danley, who married Fred two years after Rita’s death. “It took a lot from both of them to have what they had. She did a lot on one end and Fred did a lot on the other end.”
Fred and Rita had two children. Their
son Dustin owns bucking bulls and lives on Fred’s ranch in southeast New Mexico. Their daughter, Destri, is married to a contractor and lives in Tularosa.
This past summer Fred achieved another historic milestone at Ruidoso Downs when
he became the oldest trainer to win the All American Derby with the mare Rusty’s Miracle.
became the first mare in 25 years to win the richest Quarter Horse derby in the country at odds of 17-to-1.
The monster win--she led from gate to wire- -ended a stretch of bad luck for Rusty’s Miracle that began during her 2-year-old season.
After the derby win the Mays decided
to retire the filly and take her home to be a broodmare. At the track, Rusty’s Miracle won nine of 16 career races over two years and earned $762,565. Of that total, $651,359 came from her win in the All American Derby. By retiring her, the Mays passed up a chance to run the mare in the $750,000 Champion of Champions race in California in December.
And if not for all of the Murphy’s Law episodes, the mare might easily have won a lot more races and money.
As a 2-year-old filly in 2018, Rusty’s Miracle tied with another horse for the 10th fastest time in the trials for the All American Futurity, the world’s richest Quarter Horse race with a purse of $3 million. Since only 10 horses run in the finals, the tie for the final spot required a blind draw “shake.” The other horse won the shake and Rusty’s Miracle was the odd horse out.
The filly then drew into the All American Juvenile (the consolation race) and her bad luck continued. Danley says just as the gates opened, a handler’s hand went in front of the filly’s head and she veered badly out of the gate.
“She wiped out two horses and they
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race at Sunland Park. But after qualifying for the finals of the Sunland Derby, she again ran into trouble at the starting gate and finished out of the money as the overwhelming favorite.
The next installment in the mare’s saga of “if something can go wrong, it will go wrong,” came in the trials for the All American Derby. Once again Rusty’s Miracle finished in a tie for the
10th and final spot in the finals. Again she lost
the shake to another horse that had run the same time. But the black cloud that had hung around for two years finally lifted when one of the top qualifiers tested positive for a banned substance and was scratched. That put Rusty’s Miracle in the finals and she got the biggest win of her career.
Danley has trained several multiple stakes winning horses for the Mays over the years, but Rusty’s Miracle from the start proved to be special.
“She impressed us from the get-go,”
says Danley. “She’s what it takes to make a racehorse. She wants to win and she was willing to do anything. She caused no problems and just got better and better. She just had bad luck that kept her from making a lot of money.”
Rusty’s Miracle was purchased by the May family’s 89-year-old matriarch, Sue May and her son Doug. They paid $61,000 for the then yearling at the 2017 Ruidoso Select Sale. Miss May, as Fred Danley refers to her, picked her out.
“The main thing Miss May wants to do is watch them run,” says Danley. “And the main thing Doug does is keep her happy.”
Danley has trained horses for the Mays for more than 30 years. He met Sue May and
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 in June 1963.
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New Mexico Horse Breeder