Page 38 - New Mexico Summer 2022

A MOMENT IN TIME
Easy Jet Syndication By Marilyn Reeves
Perennial Champion and World Champion Race Horse, Easy Jet has been syndicated for a record $30 million. This figure exceeds that of the previous record set by Spectacular Bid earlier this year. Sires of numerous Champions with earnings of over $11 million, Easy Jet will continue to stand at Buena Suerte Ranch, near Roswell, New Mexico. It may be appropriate to reflect here why Easy Jet became such a brilliant runner he was by winning almost a half-million dollars. At this time, very few horses in the Quarter Horse industry had attained this kind of money. Easy Jet followed his running career by siring horses that earned over a half-million dollars. Easy Date was one of the first. She earned $850,000 before she became injured and was unable to run.
Easy Jet himself is by the stakes winning Jet Deck, who was the leading money earning sire in the country at that time.
He was a sire of earners of over $6 million dollars. Go Man Go was shortly to catch and pass those earnings. Easy Jet surpassed that with money earners of $11 million. Out of a Three Bars mare, Lena’s Bar out of Lena Valenti out of Gray Dream, Easy Jet inherited great speed. Easy Jet also possesses the proper conformation that is being
I think it’s a great steap ahead for our industry in that we’ll see more synidcations taking place.
looked for in the Quarter Horse business. In addition, he incorporated the Thoroughbred bloodlines necessary for sprinters in the Quarter Horse industry. Most of the great race horses have very good family lines, and Easy Jet is certainly no exception. Easy Jet was no doubt the best produce of Lena’s Bar,
although she had other stakes winners and producers such as Jet Smooth, Mayflower Inn and Delta Rose.
Since Quarter Horses are valued in
large part on the basis of bloodlines and conformation, the return and profit of
the progeny of Easy Jet will continue to
be extremely valuable. Easy Jet has been
the leading sire of money winners every year from 1974 through 1980. His total earnings at the close of 1980 were $11 million. Each of his colt crops earned well over $1 million each year. In 1977 he was the leading sire of money earners on the North American continent for all breeds. He has produced two horses that won the All-American Futurity and has sired four World Champions. He is the only sire to have produced a Triple Crown winner, My Easy Credit, who was also a Champion Three-Year-Old in 1977. Easy Jet has sired 70 stakes winners and 75 stakes placed. The average earnings per starter is $16,000.
The race record of Easy Jet is equally as impressive. Not since Go Man Go thundered down the straightaway has an individual so captured the imagination and hearts of both spectators and horsemen. Easy Jet won nine major stakes races as a two year old in 1969. The two richest races offered in 1969 were the $400,140 All American Futurity and the $136,595 Kansas Futurity, both of which the Champion Colt counted among his victories. His other stakes victories and their purses included: Blue Ribbon Futurity, $53,166; Lubbock Downs Futurity, $25,069; Colorado Laddie Stakes, $18,825; Rocky Mountain Quarter Horse Association Futurity, $40,300; All American Futurity, $34,300; and the Sunland Fall Futurity, $52,800. Easy Jet became only the fourth two year old in history to be awarded the coveted title of World Champion Quarter Running Horse. His other awards include the 1969 Champion Two-Year-Old Colt, 1969 Champion Stallion, 1970 Champion Three-Year-Old Colt and 1970 Champion Stallion.
After standing a full book of mares during the 1970 breeding season, Easy Jet came back to the races in late June and in less than four months at the track had won $26,565 and three major stakes. He won the Rocky Mountain Derby, and the Colorado Wonderland Stakes, while placing in the
Sunland Fall Derby and finishing third in the World’s Championship Classic at Ruidoso Downs.
Thus, in two short years, Easy Jet won more money than any other straightaway runner had ever garnered in that length of time. His career totals included 38 starts, 27 first-place finishes, 7 seconds and 2 thirds, being out of the money only two times.
Syndicated in July of 1980, Dr. Leonard Blach, who supervises and manages the Buena Suerte horse breeding facility, says the syndication was not an easy decision. The
I think it’s extremely important in relation to the New Mexico Horse Breeders’ Association...
main reason that he, Walter Merrick and Harriet Peckham, who jointly own Buena Suerte Ranch, decided to syndicate Easy Jet was that he was becoming so valuable they couldn’t afford to insure him for what he
was worth. In addition, they felt syndication would give other people an opportunity to participate in the ownership of a great horse. The syndication is a general partnership organized under the Uniform Partnership Act of the State of New Mexico. The partnership was granted under the Securities Exchange Commission and approved by the Federal Trade Commission.
The 50 shares in the syndication were sold at $600,000 per share. Each of the interests in the syndication have the privilege to exercise four breedings during each annual breeding season, and has one live foal guarantee. Dr. Blach feels that the syndication has accomplished three very important objectives: they have limited Easy Jet’s book, thus increasing the value of
36 New Mexico Horse Breeder