Page 86 - June 2021

In 1997, Margo and Clete hired trainer John Hammes and have been with him ever since.
© Speedhorse
won awards of distinction from the Colorado Masonry Contractors Association.
Margo not only helped Clete in the
office and moving steel. “They built a very successful commercial and industrial masonry company literally from the ground up, and she wasn’t afraid to grab a hoe and mix mortar,” relates Brad Thomas, one of Margo’s horse-racing partners. “She didn’t give up
on their career and she won’t give up on her horses, either.”
INHERITING THE RACING GENE
“After the war, my dad and Uncle Sam got involved in Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses, and when my dad sold the home place in 1987, he wanted a place to keep his mares,” Margo says. “He asked Clete if we’d take it on and he’d pay all the bills, and it sounded fun to me.”
In 1996, Margo and her dad ran Tough
To Call, aka TC [Jet Dance-Kirks Jewel, Dr Kirk]. “He won the 550 Championship on All American day at Ruidoso at five and he was a Regional Champion. That sucker flat earned his keep!” she says of the gelding that she took on to dressage after he retired from racing.
“After we got the horses at our place, Clete and I were at the track all the time,” she adds. “Every time my dad had a horse with a little
bit of talent, we’d show up. My husband loved it, and I loved it. I love those racehorses, and I loved standing on the rail with Marvin Willhite on occasion. He’d say, ‘You know, you just can’t help it; it just kind of gets in your blood, doesn’t it?’ And it does, it really does. Being raised around it is important, too; you’ve got to have some kind of connection.”
Margo and Clete shared that connection with their boys as they grew up. “Going to Centennial was one place we could take the kids when they were little,” she says. “You paid your dime to get in the door and you bought your program, and you’d go out on the apron; you could play the ponies all day long and your kids were running around, and someone always had their eye on them. It was a safe place. It was like going to the park as far as the kids were concerned. We’d get a coke and a popcorn and spend the afternoon watching the races.”
They also shared that connection with their extended family. “When I was nine or 10, I went to the racetrack with Aunt Margo and my Uncle Clete when they raced at the fairgrounds in Adams County,” says their niece, Brooke Steven of Windsor, Colorado. “My dad had given me $20. Aunt Margo would say, ‘Okay, which horse do you want?’ and she’d show me what to look at. She’d say, ‘Okay, their knees need to be here, or their hocks need to be there,’ and I’d look to see what she meant and then I’d pick a horse and she’d go lay $2 off for me.
“She’d be running through, ‘This is what to look at,’ and teaching me how to read the Form; not making my decisions for me but trying to teach me at the age of nine or 10 how to think. I ended up coming home with over $300 or something like that. She looked at me and said,
‘Okay, honey, here’s $40. You go up to your dad and you say, here’s your
money back from the loan with interest, I’m keeping the rest.’ That
always sticks out in my mind,” says Brooke, laughing.
“I lived with her when I started my
job as coroner in Adams County. She’s a very caring
person,” continues
Brooke. “She’s tough but she’s also fair and giving. And it’s always a discussion of, ‘Okay,
if this is the way you think, why do you think that way?’ Especially when it comes to horses.
So even at that age, it was, ‘Okay, this is what you’re looking for in racehorses.’ And a lot of times with Quarter Horses, that’s also what we’re looking for in my barrel horses. What she taught me just runs through everything I do.
“My Aunt Margo is one of my best friends; she’s just a fantastic person,” Brooke adds. “She’ll watch one of my barrel runs and say, ‘Why don’t you get off his face,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I told myself, too!’”
Brooke also loves the way her aunt handles her horses. “The way she handles them, the
way she does things, gives them a life after the racetrack because they’re used to being messed with so they’re not difficult to bring from a track situation into anything else,” she says. “So, if they don’t want to be a racehorse, they have that start. The mind she puts on them really puts a good foundation on them.”
HER PARTNERSHIPS
In 1997, a year before Margo’s dad died, she and Clete hired trainer John Hammes and have been with him ever since. “He knows all the bloodlines, who owned the horses, the whole deal,” Margo says.
Partners became family to Margo and Clete. “John and Cathy are family. I keep telling John, when I say you’re family, that means I’m just a nuisance,” she jokes. “They’re wonderful people and he has my back all the time; that’s the kind of trainer you want. He’s real up-front and always honest about the horses, and he’s very patient with me.”
She also partners regularly with Brad Thomas, a commercial and industrial construction superintendent from Ohio who unofficially adopted Margo and Clete after
he hired Clete to do his masonry work in the Denver area. “In no time, they ended up being second parents to me because my parents were back in Ohio, and their grandson would call me Uncle Brad,” he says.
“One day, Margo called me in Houston and said, ‘We’re out in the middle of the pasture and I’m looking at a horse’s ass and I thought of you. You want to take this little colt to the track?’” he says, laughing. “I said, yeah. That was Preachin At The Bar (Splash Bac-Kirks Jewel, Dr Kirk).
“She said, ‘I’ll get you the horse and you take care of everything that goes with it.’ And that was her lesson in teaching me everything
84 SPEEDHORSE June 2021
In 1996, Margo and her dad ran stakes winner Tough To Call, aka TC (left).
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