Page 30 - August 2022

Little Request, a stallion that has inserted his influence without a whole lot of fanfare. (Pictured with Gary and Clay Brinson)
Little Request
By Larry Thornton
We have all heard the saying “one thing leads to another” and that simple idea is such a big part of pedigree research. When Walt Wiggins sent me a message about a match race between 1940 World Champion Clabber and the great race mare Miss Bank
at Fort Bliss, Texas during World War II, he put me on to a story that fits into the racing lore of American Quarter Horse Racing. Walt told me to contact Gary Brinson about the story and that call led me to another horse named Little Request, a horse that is found in thousands of pedigrees with very little fanfare.
When I called Gary, who is the race starter at Los Alamitos, he wanted to get
his brother Clay, who calls himself a semi- retired racehorse trainer, in on telling the story of the Fort Bliss match race. It was
the Brinson brothers’ father Ross Brinson,
a racehorse trainer for 65 years, who was instrumental in getting the match race set up. Clay told the story about the race and when we finished, I asked about some other horses that Ross Brinson trained, and one name stood out in Little Request. That led me to another interesting contribution to the racing American Quarter Horse and another interview with the Brinson brothers. Yes, one thing led to another!
The first question I asked Clay in this second interview was, “Did your dad
start with training Quarter Horses?” He responded, “Dad started off with Quarter Horses. He had Clabber. But I don’t think he was in it for all that long before he switched to the Thoroughbreds.”
Ross Brinson was born in 1911 in Dardanelle, Arkansas. Ross with his family moved to Arizona when he was about two or three years old for his mother’s health. This is where he started his friendship with Buck Nichols and his love of racehorses, not to mention his ties to Clabber. Ross lived to be 101 years old and passed away in 2013.
Ross started his career as a jockey and started training horses in about 1932. He began training Thoroughbreds in earnest after World War II, and he retired from training in 1999. His career shows that he trained 352 race winners from 2,687 starters with earnings of over $31 million. He counts among his runners Cover Up, who
SPEEDLINES
28 SPEEDHORSE August 2022
Courtesy Gary Brinson