Page 30 - 30 March 2012

Champion Junos Request, shown in the winner’s circle after the 1993 AQHA Texas Challenge Championship at Trinity Meadows, was Charley Hunt’s first “big horse.”
client Nancy McCoy. The 1988 mare ran 40 races in her five-year racing career, winning 23 including 12 stakes races and bringing in $362,131. She was the 1992 AQHA Champion Aged Mare, and set five track records at three different tracks at distances from 350 to 440 yards. Among her stakes wins were the Remington Park Championship-G1, AQHA Challenge Championship-G1, and the Anne Burnett Invitational Handicap-G1.
“She was probably my all-time favorite,” Charley said. “I hadn’t had a really big horse yet, and that mare got me a jump start. She gave me a lot of opportunities; when you win big, you get noticed.”
Getting noticed steadily built Charley’s roster of winners, which grew to include the 1995 AQHA Champion Aged Stallion Rare Bar, owned and bred by Gary L. Mead, who won 13 of 38 races and $263,396; Grade 1 Heritage Place Futurity winner Classified As Dash; and Pat and Walt Fletcher’s multiple graded stakes winner First To Ramble, a winner of 21 of his 57 races with career earnings of $348,647.
along Comes CharlTon
Through the years, Charlton soaked in his father’s methods and his values. After high school, intending to discover his calling in
life, Charlton headed for college. But what he discovered was that his calling was back on the racetrack. “I was always at the track somewhere when I wasn’t in school,” he said. “I never really was away from it.”
His solo career began at Arapahoe Park in Colorado. “I’d help my dad out, going places he didn’t have time to go,” Charlton said. “After a while, I started going to the same places he went, but ran a separate stable.”
hanDs-on hanDling
One piece of the Hunts’ success pie comes from their insistence on knowing each horse’s quirks and qualities. Even at age 62, Charley still insists on riding his colts to get a feel for each one’s personality and how they move.
“I don’t do all the riding, of course,” Charley said. “But they’re all individuals, like kids. The more you know about each one, the better off you are in making them successful.”
His experience as an exercise rider and a jockey gave him a unique training perspective, and he has passed that knowledge and wisdom on to Charlton.
Getting to know their equine charges carries over from the training track to the barn. “When I’m in Oklahoma City, I’ll go to the track in
the morning and Charley’s there,” said Yearsley. “And when I come back at 8:00 at night, he’s still there. He’s patient with his horses, he loves
rest more than a race. I like that,” Kelly added. “In my opinion, Charley is one of the top horsemen in the country in Quarter Horses.”
In a sport where young horses sometimes come and go quickly, the Hunt method stands as an ensign for producing runners that race solidly and soundly for years.
The early Days
One of nine children growing up near Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Charley spent a lot of time with the horses at the local match track. “My dad had a dairy and we always had horses around, and he ran some horses,” Charley said.
Charley got his first racing job in 1958, at age 8, when his brother got him on ponying horses at Red Oaks in Ruidoso, New Mexico.
“I’d make money for my school clothes,” Charley said. “They didn’t have walkers back then. I got on the pony horse at 6 a.m. and I’d have a horse on each side.”
He went on to work for W.W. Wilson, who ran Decketta in the ’60s, and C.D. “Buffalo” Wooten in New Mexico. “I worked for some real good people,” Charley said.
He rode his first official race in 1964 at age 14. “That was in Stroud, Oklahoma,” he said. He rode for about 13 years, and then, when
he married his wife, Starlet, they headed for California where he rode and she trained. In 1979 Charley got his trainer’s license. “The circuit back then was Bay Meadows to Los Alamitos,” he said.
He got his first big break with Junos Request, owned and bred by his longtime
Charley Hunt saddled Classified As Dash to win the 1999 Heritage Place Futurity-G1 at Remington Park.
28 SPEEDHORSE, March 30, 2012
INDUSTRY PRofIle
remington Park Full Stride