Page 115 - Speedhorse July 2018

the men at the track teased us about our Shetland, he was so danged little. We had his legs wrapped, and he was so little and his wraps so big that the wraps rubbed together when he walked. Jimmy Maroney was supposed to ride him for us up there, but he had gotten hurt that week in a workout and wasn’t able to ride. Donnie Knight, the good Californian jockey who later rode Easy Date was just starting to ride, and he rode him for us, and he won his heat but lacked 1/100 of qualifying for the finals. The next week, Jim Maroney was able to ride him, and the consolation was on the same day as the finals. That was the year that Mr. Juniper Bar won the finals and Leo’s Showman won the consolation by four or five lengths. Anyway, that got us interested in race horses.
Leo’s Showman made a race horse. He went on to run AAAT and equaled the track record at Sunland going 350 yards in :17.7, after having bred 59 mares that spring. Marvin and Jerry were hooked. Marvin decided to try to find some of the old mare’s other colts.
Jerry says, “We had sold FL Lady Bug to Art Beall for $1,500 in foal to a horse we had named Leopie, a cutting horse. Leopie was a Leo San bred horse. She foaled after Art bought her. We went up and bought her filly, Lady Bug Leo, out of a sale for $700. She was the second horse we ran. She had speed, too. We crippled her working against Leo’s Showman the first time she was ever out of the gates. It was our ignorance. We ruined more horses there in
the beginning than we ever got to the track with, and we learned some hard lessons. Leo’s Showman had just come back from Denver where he had qualified for the Denver Futurity, and we had a boy working for us named Boots Robertson, who was a good rider. He got on Leo’s Showman and I rode Lady Bug Leo. This was only the third time we had ever been on Lady Bug Leo, and she had never been worked with another horse. We even took her up to
the gate and jumped her out one time, and
she wasn’t even broke good. I had never been around the gates, and she hadn’t, either. Boots had explained to me how to hang on coming out of the gate, and Marvin gave me a bat that weighed about four pounds and said, ‘Boots
is going to try to outrun you.’ Lady Bug Leo outran Leo’s Showman 300 yards that day. But she wasn’t conditioned and her ankle swelled up bad. After that, she could never stand the pain and would run from rail to rail and was still seldom behind. Two top riders rode her in Ruidoso in futurity trials, and they both said when they got off of her that she was the fastest they had ever been on. I think she’s the fastest horse Marvin ever had. She AAA-ed even with big problems, and we were the cause of those!”
Next Marvin found Lady Lasan and traded 1,000 or so sheep for her. She was a four year
A trainer once offered
Jerry Whittle $100,000 for Jerry’s Bug . . . “and I turned it down. I thought he was trying to buy his halter!”
Jerry’s Bug won the 1973 Blue Ribbon Futurity over a frozen track.
Jerry’s Bug won his Midway Downs Yearling Futurity trial in Stroud under jockey Jimmy Maroney in sub-freezing temperature.
SPEEDHORSE, July 2018 113
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JANUARY 1978 ISSUE
E