Page 47 - July 2017

R.D. Hubbard
The horsemen are buying the facilities from R.D. Hubbard, who owns Crystal Springs Farm in Tularosa, NM.
Shaun Hubbard
Shaun Hubbard, general manager of Ruidoso Downs, said the new owners are committed to keeping the track as “the best place in the nation for Quarter Horse racing.”
It’sa situation Big Jake would appreci- ate. It’s 2017, a pretty good season
so far, which is to be expected given that American Quarter Horses came into it off a year in which nearly $300 million was wagered on almost 14,800 starters in more than 7,700 races with purses topping more than $127 million.
Out West last year, four tracks in New Mexico sent 3,161 starters to the gate in 1,228 races worth just under $28 million. And that doesn’t include the $5,415,084 paid in just three marquee races on Labor Day weekend: the All American Futurity, Derby and Gold Cup. Those are the flagship Grade 1 events at Ruidoso Downs, where purses for American Quarter Horses accounted for more than half the state’s total. Altogether, the fastest horses on earth last year ran for $33,559,835 in the Land of Enchantment.
So, 2016 was pretty good. What’s more, it left 2017 ripe with opportunity. Especially on The Mountain.
Yeah, it’s a situation Big Jake would ap- preciate. In “Big Jake” – a classic western set in 1909 with John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and Richard Boone – a band of outlaws looking for gold cross the Rio Bravo into Texas.
So here we are halfway through 2017. A couple months ago, five horsemen saddled up and rode into New Mexico.
These guys aren’t outlaws, they’re not look- ing for gold, they’ve already stocked their own bankrolls. Four of them are from Texas, the other from California. They’re looking to buy Ruidoso Downs.
Riding point is Stan Sigman, who left his plush office at the nation’s largest telecommu- nications company to raise horses and cattle in Texas and now has the pinnacle of Quarter Horse racing in his sights.
Johnny Trotter is the High Plains cowboy who rode in from the Texas Panhandle.
Narciso “Chicho” Flores worked his way up from a South Texas field hand to owning two of the largest dry wall businesses in the Lone Star State and raising horses at Ledbet- ter, Texas.
Gary McKinney went from a part-time gig driving a truck out of Lubbock to standing leading sire Corona Cartel and other top stallions at his state-of-the-art Lazy E Ranch in Oklahoma.
Riding in from the West Coast, John An- dreini built an insurance business in San Ma- teo, just south of San Francisco, and ranches at Paicines, California.
“These are all very accomplished business- men,” says Sigman. “Each of them first and foremost are successful businessmen in their own right, outside of the horse industry, but secondarily they also are horsemen who have built something in the horse industry, too. So,
I think we’ve put together the right group of people who collectively will have the mental acuity and financial ability to do what needs to be done.”
Getting it done starts with two new entities: All American Racing LLC and All American Sales LLC. With Sigman as chair of both entities and with hopes of closing
on the sale in the fourth quarter of this year, they are buying both Ruidoso Downs and the Ruidoso Horse Sale Company.
Oh, and the casino, too: “I’ve got a little problem with being the owner of a casino,” adds Trotter, with a sigh, “but that’s what we’ve got to have to make it work and enable us to do what we need to do in the horse business.”
Getting it done also means keeping it all on, well, the right track. Just as it has been since the 1920s, when horsemen were running their Quarter Horses in what then was well-known as “Mr. Miller’s cornfield” at Ruidoso, it will
be horsemen at the reins: horsemen running a casino, not casino people running a racetrack.
The horsemen are buying the facilities from R.D. Hubbard, who in 1988 bought Ruidoso Downs in partnership with Dr. Ed Allred, who owns Los Alamitos Race Course in California. Now 81, Hubbard also formerly shared owner- ship of Los Alamitos with Allred and later pur- chased Allred’s interest in Ruidoso Downs, and over the years also has had ownership or shares in Hollywood Park in California, Zia Park in New Mexico, Turf Paradise in Arizona and The Woodlands in Kansas. Hubbard still owns Crys- tal Springs Farm at Tularosa, New Mexico.
“Nothing will change at Crystal Springs, except maybe putting an All American Futurity winner in one of the paddocks,” Hubbard said in a prepared statement. “I’m not about to quit racing. I still need to win the All American Futurity. We’re still breeding mares and still making babies. I’ll be at the sales this year buy- ing horses.”
Old Friends, Similar Thoughts
Shaun Hubbard, who is R.D. Hubbard’s grandson and the general manager of the track, also had something to say. “These men know Ruidoso Downs, and they are committed to keeping it as the best place in the nation for Quarter Horse racing.”
The five horsemen ride into the Land of En- chantment with that one primary goal in mind.
“One of our main objectives is to keep Quar- ter Horse racing in Ruidoso and continue to grow the six big races,” says McKinney, 67. “Mr. Hubbard has done a great job growing them
to this point. The large futurities and derbies
in Ruidoso are some of the highest purses in Quarter Horse racing, and we’re very committed to extending their future well past Mr. Hub- bard’s ownership. As important as anything else, we want to help Quarter Horse racing continue to flourish nationally and globally.”
McKinney earned a degree in petroleum engineering from Texas Tech University. He put himself through school by driving for a trucking company at Lubbock, where he shuttled empty trailers to meat-packing plants in Amarillo and throughout the surrounding area before return- ing with loaded trailers to the home office. He now has his own company in the oil-rich Perm- ian Basin at Odessa, Texas.
Flores started out with even less.
“I love the racehorse business, I love the people in it, the horses in it, the challenges in it,” says Flores, 70. “I love it all: the highs when it’s high and the lows when it’s horrible. But that’s all part of it. This is not for people who think that money alone is going to buy you a winning horse. You do what you can, you run your horses and hope for the best.”
Flores grew up in poverty near La Pryor, Texas, in a family of migrant workers who went north on wheat harvest in the spring and summer and west to California to pick fruit and vegetables in late summer and fall. He and his two brothers were