Page 40 - January 2018

Walt Wiggins Sr. (in cowboy hat) at Santa Fe Downs in 1974.
statistical pages on racing stallions. “Back in those days and even through 1980 when I left Speedhorse, AQHA didn’t have a computer system for pedigrees and statistics like they
do today; all those records were kept by hand
on index cards or just filed away in someone’s mind. So the Stallion Register pages were for the most part handwritten and compiled on each stallion, and then typeset. We’d start compiling Stallion Register pages the end of August to be published in November.”
Walt Jr. also helped computerize pedigree records. Before he left the magazine around 1980, he reached out to a very well-established pedigree business in Lexington, Kentucky: Bloodstock Research. “Not a day went by that I didn’t wish that that type of records research was a part of our business,” he says. “One day, without really thinking it through or even talking to Connie about the idea, I picked up the phone and called Bloodstock Research and found out the owner was Dick Broadbent. I asked if I could speak to him, and naturally I didn’t get through, but my call spiked his curiosity enough that he called
me back. I told him the Quarter Horse racing business really needed the type of service he offered and asked if he’d be willing to look at it.
“He said he was in the process of upgrading the computer in Kentucky,” Walt continued. “He said, ‘Why don’t you just come buy the old one.’
“It had all the records on it,” Walt Jr. said. “The programming was already in place, and Dick offered to teach us how to develop it for the Quarter Horse business. I was just beside myself with excitement! I went to Connie with the idea and she agreed, so we went to Kentucky and made the deal.”
At the time, Walt says, Speedhorse was still in a little office building in the middle of Norman, but Connie found an old Stuckey’s filling station building on the Interstate right outside of town. She designed the whole second floor of that building to house the computer and Speedhorse moved to the new building. The endeavor resulted in the AQHA beefing up its computer records, so Speedhorse folded its program.
“After the computer purchase, in 1979, we started another publication: The Thoroughbred Times, about Thoroughbred racing in the Southwest,” Walt Jr. adds. “Then, Connie traded Thoroughbred Times to Dick Broadbent in Kentucky, who expanded it to a national level.
Connie Golden remained the Speedhorse publisher until 2010 when John Bachelor took the reins. “Connie didn’t know anything about the horse business when she took the magazine over,” Walt Jr. says, “but she was a very, very shrewd businesswoman. She was a quick learner and she surrounded herself with good people in the horse business that helped her make it happen.”
Connie’s son, Andy, came into the organization as well, and in the latter years, Andy was probably the driving force. He wasn’t raised in the horse business either, but he also was a quick learner and adapted well.”
38 SPEEDHORSE, January 2018
“Walt was so influential in my career and was so good for the industry. I’ve always had an interest in writing, and he got me interested in photography and was kind enough to take a sophomoric, know-it-all kid and publish my article on conformation [in one of the early issues] and provide some drawings for it.
“He assigned me some articles that enabled me to go to Nocona, Texas, and interview Sid Vail, who owned Three Bars. Walt had some reel-to-reel tape recordings of a conversation he and J.B. Ferguson, who had Top Deck and Go Man Go, had had. I got to listen to those tapes and take some notes.
“About that time, I was planning to
leave TCU and go to France to see the
world and write my great American novel. I went on a one-way ticket and was there about seven months. One day while I was there, France devalued the U.S. dollar, so suddenly I didn’t have enough money to get back home. That was a panic-stricken moment — I knew I wasn’t going to get a job in France at that time — so I sat down and wrote articles about Go Man Go and Top Deck and Three Bars. I sent them to Walt and he sent me the money, and that’s what enabled me to come back to the States.
“I called Walt in his last days and told him that story and, typically, his humor was still vibrant. He said, ‘Well, the verdict is still out on how well that worked out for both countries.’ He was a terrific jokester; he could tell a joke and a story better than anyone.”
President & General Manager, Remington Park & Lone Star Park