Page 7 - 8 August 2012

on the Green River, and Mari often cooked three meals a day for the consistently at-capacity guest list of 60.
The ranch provided an ideal growing ground for her children, who fondly recall summers there, and later, in Ruidoso, New Mexico. “I loved my childhood,” said Nancy. “We played nearly all of our games on horseback, had pack trips and all- day rides, and went on fishing and hunting trips on horses. We often got up at 5:30 a.m. to help the wranglers ready the horses, then headed for breakfast at the sound of the meal bell.
“Later in Ruidoso, we would rent a house for the summer and travel to Taos and other places and learn about the Indians, history and culture. We also spent time in Florida where my grandparents had a place.”
At first the horses served as just a part of the business and pleasure of ranch life, but as time went on, Mari got more interested in the horses. “I got a couple of mares and they had a couple of babies,” she said.
Around 1971 she sold the ranch to friends from the family’s hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana, where the George family wintered and the kids attended school each year.
“We already had a farm here in Indiana,” Mari said. “I took the horses I wanted to keep and started breeding here. But they were just riding horses.
“At that time, a lot of people were just getting interested in horse racing,” she added. “I started with just a few horses and local trainers took whatever I got to the tracks close by. Then they ran in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Illinois, and at fair dates that were popular at the time.”
She also got to know a lot of people from her stint out west. Although she didn’t show herself, she went to a lot of horse shows, which led to her wanting to improve the quality of the horses she bred.
Since then, her horse breeding endeavor has developed into a horseracing empire. “I wanted to get bigger and better horses and all of a sudden I wound up with too many,” she said. She admitted she doesn’t really know just how many she owns, but estimates the number
at about 70 at home at the Circle S Ranch
in Terre Haute; another 70 at her Ocala, Florida, ranch; and 10 more in training with Connie Barnes in Oklahoma.
THE FAMILY LINE
Mari names Me Gotta Go, by Go Man Go, as the best mare she ever had. “She outran everybody,” Mari said. “That was back in the ’70s. That was the beginning of my racing stable.”
“It was really exciting when Me Gotta Go missed qualifying for the All
American Futurity by just one place,” said Nancy. “She ran the fastest time of the first consolation. It was exciting to be a part of that whole All American Futurity week. Me Gotta Go was one of Mom’s first racehorses and one of the best we ever had.”
Although Me Gotta
Go didn’t have any win- producing babies, Mari believed in the mare’s Maddons Bright Eyes and Top Deck bloodlines—lines that still run through the veins of Mari’s horses today.
“Mari knew Mr.
Maddon and was able to
acquire some of that stock
early on,” said Mari’s
former trainer Scott Wells,
now president and general
manager of Remington
Park in Oklahoma City.
“‘Bright Eyes’ held track
and world records at six
different distances; she was the greatest race mare of her time.”
Wells recalled Gone Gone Gone, the 1978 filly with Maddons Bright Eyes/Top Deck bloodlines that he trained for Mari. “She was a straight homebred, typical of Mari’s horses,” he said. “Her pedigree wasn’t the height of fashion, but was of exceptional quality.” At odds of 70-1, he says, the mare ran about a neck off of stakes winner Queen For Cash, who amassed career earnings nearing half a million dollars.
Speedhorse Files
Gone Gone Gone following a 1981 victory at Los Alamitos.