Page 123 - Speedhorse July 2018

Jockey Junior Groll aboard Shu Shu Baby Doll after winning at Goliad in 1953. Jockey Junior Groll & Shu Shu Baby Doll after winning at New Braunfels in 1953.
I matched Shu Shu with George Parr’s horse, Slow Motion, and outran him at Cuero. So, then George told me, “Well, my horse can’t run on this track. I’ll take him to any other track and run for $2,500.”
I said, “You name the track and I’ll come to it. All I want to do is walk the track and choose my side.”
He said, “There’s not anything fairer than that. I pick the track and you pick your side.”
I said, “I’m liable to give you the side you want, but I just want to see that the track is equal.”
So, George called me one day. “I’m going to the track. You’ve told me I could run anywhere. We’re going to run at Eagle Pass,” and he said, “We’re going to run 330 yards
for $5,000.” That was all right with me. Shu Shu outran Slow Motion again. George would run me today if I was down there. He wasn’t the kind of man who cried when he’d lose. I ran that man 14 races and never one time did we have any trouble. When I’d win, he’d walk up and pull that money out and he paid his bill. We went up to Skidmore to run Shu Shu one more time. He had called me and asked, “How much earnest money do you want to put up?” We agreed on $800 earnest money. When I got to Skidmore, Parr wouldn’t run his mare. She was sick. He just busted a bale of $100 bills and counted out eight and gave them to me. He said, “If Shu Shu hadn’t come, you’d have lost your forfeit.”
I offered to run Lady Wright that day at another horse he had there, and everybody was wanting us to run, but something told George Parr not to run a race with me. If he had run Lady Wright that day, he’d have found out
what a race horse was, because that little hussy was running even though she was just a baby! We were living in Victoria in 1951 or
’52 when I ran Shu Shu Baby at Johanna in
Cuero for $25,000. They don’t run those races up in that Valley for pocket change! Shu Shu Baby walked down the track just like she was dead. Not many would bet on her; they said she was sick, but she was pretending. She outran Johanna, and those that had backed her cleaned up.
I had run her in California and in Arizona and Florida and Louisiana as well as Texas and Oklahoma. I always start my horses when they’re 16 months old. I ran Shu Shu from 1948 to 1956. She was 16 months old when I started running her, but you can’t get a rating on one that young. Starting them when they’re young teaches them a whole lot while it legs them up. Of course, I don’t put heavy weight on them, and I never have a sore-legged horse. I never put any medicine on a horse’s legs unless he gets hurt. You take a cow horse out and work him all day, and you don’t have to rub his legs. There’s not a whole lot of difference between a cow horse and a race horse. Medicine is what ruins young horses. And medicine can’t help a bad legged horse. In starting a colt at 16 months, of course, you have to be more careful with him. You don’t put any weight on him, and you don’t run him any 220 yards every time you turn around. Just like my colt, Jet Shu.
I began to train Jet Shu last October. I broke him and just played with him and showed him how to come out of the gate. It doesn’t take many trips to break one out of the gate.
I broke Jet Shu out of the gate three times one day and let him run about 25 or 30 yards. The next time I put that little devil in the gate, and when he got in, he was ready, and he left that gate and we let him run 50 yards and took him off. He never ran any fur- ther than 50 yards until I took him Lubbock to his first race. He was the first horse out of that gate, and he was the first horse clear to the end by three or four lengths. But you’re not going to hurt a colt if you break him young like that if you take proper care of him and use some judgement.
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Raymond Kopecky and his wife, Fronia, now live in Odessa, Texas, where he stands his stallion, Mr. Michael, and trains running horses on a limited basis. Kopecky laughs, “Not many people have been in this business longer than Johnny Ferguson, Lester Goodson and me! And I’ll tell you this . . . I’ve pulled mighty few horses down to the race track and I wasn’t scared to stop any- where and run at anything a man had!”
Kopecky had run horses like Miss Bar Lay and the AQHA Supreme Champion Diamond Duron, but there’s just something about a little mare
with a lot of heart like Shu Shu that get’s under a man’s skin.
opecky sold Shu Shu Baby Doll to Perry Davis
and Bill Pollard in 1956. She never did much good for them. Perhaps she was a one-man horse. She passed through another owner or two and was bred to Hygro one time and Hy Diamond another. In the meantime, Raymond had gone to work for Bobby French in 1959, a position he held for five years. French tried to buy the 18-year-old mare for $20,000, but the offer was refused.
SPEEDHORSE, July 2018 121
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM NOVEMBER 1974 ISSUE
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