Page 50 - August 2016

RIDE TV’s on-air personalities Tom Dawson and Anthony Lucia
“This is the All American Futurity. To
get here, it takes a lot of hard work, grit
and determination. Over 1,000 horses get nominated to the All American Futurity every year. Only one can win.” The commercial is short but powerful, just like the classic 440-yard Quarter Horse race that is the focus of Ride Television Network Inc.’s (RIDE TV) popular show, “Thousand to One.”
“Thousand to One” began production last year with a pilot episode filmed at Frontera Training Center and the Ruidoso Select Yearling Sale. Since then, several hour-long episodes have followed the training and development of a select group of trainers and two year olds on their journey to the 2016 All American Futurity-G1.
“The title of the program is supposed to allude to the odds of winning the All American Futurity,”
said Amanda Morris, RIDE TV’s communications manager. “It’s a program that follows a lot of horses from early on in their training into their two-year- old year, and then it follows them through the trials to the All American Futurity.”
Because many of those horses are paid up into Ruidoso’s Triple Crown, “Thousand to One” was on the scene at the trials and finals of both the Ruidoso Futurity and the Rainbow Futurity. The equine stars of the show have included Ruidoso Futurity-G1 winner Apolltical Chad and Rainbow Futurity-G1 winner A Revenant, and fellow finalists Ms Maggie Mae and Wild Mares Milk. The human story-telling element has focused on the owner/trainer/jockey teams surrounding the horses, and has included trainers Mike Joiner, Donna McArthur, Fred Danley, Blane Wood, Kasey Willis, Mike Robbins, and others.
by Sue Zuber
“It’s basically a documentary that is following the progression of these horses from an early age and the early stages of their training, to what it takes to be a Champion,” Morris said, adding that there would be seven or eight episodes
once the series is complete. “We’re four to five episodes in, and we’ll continue through the All American Futurity.”
While the odds of winning the All American Futurity are big, RIDE TV was also a relative longshot when it was proposed back in 2011
as the brainchild of cutting horse trainer Craig Morris of Burleson, Texas. Morris, a member of the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA) Riders Hall of Fame, had already branched out into television production and served as the on- air talent for “Road to the Winner’s Circle,” a show that followed four cutting horse trainers
RIDE TV’s Rick Luna, Trinidad Parada and Jerry Butler
48 SPEEDHORSE, August 2016