Page 79 - Speedhorse March 2018

LIFE BEFORE RACING
James was one of five sons born to Harry and Margaret Streelman in the dairy country of Artesia, California. He inherited his horse passion from
his dad, who bought him a horse and a bridle, but no saddle or bareback pad, for his eighth birthday. “Dad said, ‘This is how you learn to ride,’” James says. “I fell off a few times, but I learned.”
By 17, James had accumulated half a dozen horses, which he rode in gymkhanas and stock horse classes. “I had a saddle by then,” he jokes. He sold the horses before attending Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, on a football scholarship. He then attended graduate school at University of Iowa in Iowa City and graduated from the University of Health Sciences’ medical school at Des Moines in 1974.
While in college, he ran into Mae DeBoer, whom he knew from his mother’s hometown of Corsica, South Dakota, and who was in California attending a church convention between her junior and senior years of high school. They married after college and recently celebrated their 51st anniversary. Together, they’ve raised four children: Chad, Barry, Trisha and Tara.
DUTCH MASTERS III
After medical school, Doc says, he and
two friends were scheduled to play golf one Thursday but got rained out. “We were sitting, kind of bored, in a little restaurant/bar in Chino, California, right across the street from the Chino airport,” he says. “We drove over there, chartered an airplane, flew to Vegas for the afternoon and got our butts kicked.”
The trio decided to give up Vegas gambling and instead, buy a racehorse to quench their thirst for action. The fact that they all worked during the day and Quarter Horses ran at night, plus the fact that the buy-in was lower for Quarter Horses, helped make up their minds to invest there.
Zure Hope Again, shown winning the 1988 Pacific Classic Derby, was the partnership’s first stakes winner.
Doc started subscribing to Quarter Week
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Doc’s partner of 10 years, Bill Dale, with wife Janis, of Dale’s Running Quarter Ranch in Clinton, Missouri.
County Register for the PCQHRA Yearling g
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Russell Harris and Curt Perner. Curt was th
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come and cheer on their new endeavor. “We ran dead last,” Doc continues. “The next week he said, ‘Doc, I don’t want to see any more bills. I’m done.’ So, he dropped out after one race.”
Denny stayed in the partnership until around 2006, then dropped out until Doc talked him into getting involved with Chazaq about two years ago. Denny still runs a couple horses on his own, with Jaime Gomez or Lin Melton, and still occasionally partners with Dutch Masters III.
A LONG STRING OF WINNERS
In 1985, Dutch Masters III signed on with their second trainer, Bob Baffert, who won the 1988 Los Alamitos Derby and the 1989 Go Man Go Handicap with the partnership’s first stakes-winning horse, Zure Hope Again (A Zure Request – St Louis’ Child, Old Pueblo TB). Between 1987 and 1989, the gelding won 12 of 33 races, earning $402,769.
Also in the mid-1980s, Dutch Masters III bought Easy Henryetta at the Walter Merrick dispersal sale in Ruidoso. The mare went on to
then, one day, ran across an ad in the Orang
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In 1983, Doc and two friends, one of whom was dairyman Denny Boer, formerly of California and now of Jerome, Idaho, were checking stats on breeding bulls while out to dinner. “There was one called Dutch Master,” Doc says. “We said, ‘Well, let’s just take that name, add an “s” to the end and a Roman numeral III,’ because we were all three Dutchmen.”
They bought a mare at the Pacific Coast Sale in October, but she didn’t start running until the following June. “That was nine months,” Doc says. By that time, the third partner had gathered about 60 people to
SPEEDHORSE, March 2018 77