Page 12 - NMHBASummer2019

A MESSAGE FROM DOUBLE LL FARMS
We would like to reach out and thank each of you for the kind words and the outpouring of love you have shown to all of us at Double LL Farms.
First Moonflash was a part of our family and we are grateful to his owners to have stood such an amazing horse. We are truly heartbroken, but our lives and the racing industry were blessed by “Moon” and his legacy will continue through the years with his offspring.
-W.L, Dee and the Double LL Farm Family
Now I can run on the wind
My skin like a velvet shiver on the breeze My hoofs passing over the grass
In leaps too great to be measured
My mane tumbling like the boiling clouds You will feel my breath
In the warmth of summer
You will hear my heart beat
In the sounds of the sky
Now I can run
In these great wide rolling hills of time I am truly free
Here in the spaces of your heart
FIRST MOONFLASH: 2005-19
The AQHA champion and sire of champions was humanely euthanized on May 29.
First Moonflash, the 2009 AQHA champion aged stallion and one of Ameri- can Quarter Horse racing’s leading sires, was humanely euthanized on May 29 after a battle with laminitis. He was 14.
“We just didn’t want him to suffer anymore,” co-owner Pierre Amestoy Jr. told StallioneSearch.com. “He was very good to us, not only as a runner but also as a sire.
“He was simply the greatest,” Amestoy added.
Owned by a partnership, First Moonflash stood his entire career at W.L. and Dee Moor- ing’s Double LL Farm at Bosque, New Mexico. The son of champion First To Flash and
the stakes-placed Major Rime mare Nagano Moon was bred in New Mexico by Dosi and
Norma Alvarez, and he was campaigned by Pierre and Leslie Amestoy and Maria Gonzalez.
First Moonflash won 14 of 25 starts and earned $969,828, and his 10 stakes wins in- cluded the Championship at Sunland Park (G1) in 2008 and ‘09, and the 2009 New Mexico Cup Championship (G1) at Zia Park. He was voted AQHA champion aged stallion after a 4-year-old campaign during which he won seven of eight outs, including six stakes, and banked $491,040.
First Moonflash was also a finalist in the ‘08 All American Derby (G1) at Ruidoso, and the following season he set world records at the 300-, 400-, and 440-yard distances at Sunland Park. The 440-yard world record of :20.274, which he set in the 2009 AQHA
New Mexico Challenge Championship (G1), earned him a 122 speed index and broke his own previous world record.
First Moonflash was a half-brother to four stakes winners, including Dash Ta Moon, the winner of the 2007 Lubbock Stakes (G2) at Zia Park, and 2013 New Mexican Spring Fu- turity (RG2) winner Moonifisant. He entered stud in 2010; at the time of his death, the stallion had sired 251 winners and the earners of more than $15.8 million from seven crops, including 2018 champion 2-year-old Flash And Roll, 2013 champion 2-year-old Hand- some Jack Flash, 2014 champion 3-year-old filly Foxy Moonflash, and 2014 All American Derby (G1) winner Too Flash For You.
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New Mexico Horse Breeder
THE NEWS