Page 48 - 7 July 2012

The year 1987 was a great one for Russell Harris, who won the El Primero Del Ano Derby with Hold All Tickets, the Pomona 870 Invitational Handicap with Champion Calyx, and the La Primera Del Ano Derby with Florentine.
“I get to the track early in the morning,” he added. “It’s cold—in the 40s—and I’m up on my pony horse, getting to watch those horses blowing smoke out their noses, and seeing the tracks the deer have left, and the ducks swim- ming around in the pond. It’s pretty impressive to get paid to do that.
“If I had to go back to 125 head and running at five or six racetracks, I’d retire tomorrow.”
His Racing Roots
In 1965, Harris had just graduated from high school when a colt he’d raised, a Go Man Go son named Go Rebel Go, qualified for the All American Futurity and ran fourth in the finals.
Harris recalled the fortuitous breeding that produced Go Rebel Go just a few years previ- ous. “My dad had two mares we were going to send to Walter Merrick’s in Quanah, Texas, to breed to Three Bars,” he said. “We loaded them up and I set out for Texas.
“By the time I got there with the mares, Three Bars had passed away,” Harris contin- ued. “I called my dad to tell him and he called a friend at Los Alamitos. I drove them on out there and we bred them to Go Man Go. I drove all the way from southern Alabama to Quanah, Texas, to California and back, and never had a driver’s license.”
The cross-country trip is just one of a multitude of stories that has made Harris’ life interesting and adventurous. Coincidentally, another traveling tale involved Speedhorse Chief Operating Officer John Bachelor Jr.
When Harris was growing up near the Gulf Coast in Foley, Alabama, his dad, Guy Harris, owned a farm equipment company and partnered in racing and breeding interests with Bachelor’s father.
“Russell was several years older than me,” said Bachelor, whose newfound career in rac- ing came after college on a rodeo scholarship
48 SPEEDHORSE, July 6, 2012
Pomona fair
Calyx
frank de Vol
Hold All Tickets
frank de Vol
Florentine