Page 32 - February 2017

closed it like a freight train. He got up and got the win, and from that point all the way through 2015 and then through 2016, he got better and better and better.”
Abrams concluded with his assessment of the final three races of 2016 for Jessies First Down and professed his admiration of the dual between Jessies First Down and Zoomin Effortlessly.
“Jessie culminated 2016 with those three grade ones in a row,” he said. “Each time
he stepped away better and better. As you know he beat Zoomin Effortlessly, the horse
I thought was the fastest horse in the United States by far. He beat him twice in the last two races of the year at Zia Park and Sunland. He beat him both times by a combined distance of less than a head. They were really hooking up and going down through there, and Jessie was getting away from the gate better than Zoomin Effortlessly was, and
so then Zoomin Effortlessly was trying to
run Jessie down. Those were two of the best horse races I have ever witnessed myself. It was like a match race. There were quality horses in the both races, but they were never in contention. Zoomin Effortlessly and Jessie would come down there side by side, looking each other eye to eye. It was something to watch if you enjoy horse racing.”
The backstory of Jessies First Down began when Ted Abrams was introduced to horse racing. “I used to keep some horses at a public stable on highway 6 in the 1970’s when it was all still a rural area around Houston,” he recalled. “A couple of guys owned some racehorses and one of them had a horse that I thought was competitive. That was when there was no pari-mutuel in
Texas, so they were running at places like Columbus, Goliad and Laredo.
“The guy with the competitive horse wanted to enter him in a futurity at Columbus, but he didn’t have the money for the entry fee. So, I agreed to put up the money for a portion of the winnings. We didn’t win anything, but that was enough to get me interested in the horse racing.
“Mr. Sonny Chance used to have a speed horse sale here back in the 70’s, and I bought a horse at his sale called Charge Royalty,” Abrams tells of how his interest in Quarter Horse racing grew. “We had some success with Charge Royalty. He qualified for some futurities at the tracks around Texas and made a little bit of money. That really set the hook in me and from there, I continued to buy more horses and build a string of horses and then eventually a string of broodmares.
“We bought a small place in Hempstead, Texas, and we’ve built it into what we feel is a pretty nice horse facility,” Abrams says about how he and his son, Ted Jr., have continued in racing. “We’ve got a few mares there and we have run horses like Jess Zoomin. We’ve had a lot of luck and my son has had a lot
of luck. He built a place over in Louisiana, and he had Vals Fortune that was a (2-time) Champion. He also had War Colors, who was never recognized as a Champion, but he had a lot of success in Louisiana. I think he made $300,000 or $400,000 over there.”
The sire of Jessies First Down is FDD Dynasty and his dam is the Abrams’ bred Jess A Classy Lassy, by Mr Jess Perry and out of Mighty Classy Lassy.
“I bought Mighty Classy Lassy from Connie Hall at the Vessels sale in California,”
Abrams relayed about how Mighty Classy Lassy became a significant mare for his breeding program. “I gave $20,000 for her and raced her. She had some moderate success. She qualified for the Sam Houston Futurity and the Sam Houston Derby and came within a whisker of winning the Sam Houston Futurity. I kept her as a foundation mare for the present-day lines that we breed through.
“Jess A Classy Lassy was the result of a Mr Jess Perry breeding to Mighty Classy Lassy,” Abrams continued. “We raced her and Heath Taylor trained her. She had the fastest time for the Rainbow Futurity and had a couple outs after that, but had some knee problems. It was going to be extensive surgery to fix the knees and to rehabilitate her after that. She would have gone all the way through her 3-year-old year before we could get her back to the track, so we fixed her knees, let her recoup, and then put her into the broodmare band.”
Explaining his reason for breeding Jess
A Classy Lassy to FDD Dynasty, Abrams said, “Billy Smith, Pat Guthrie, and I were summer neighbors in Ruidoso. Billy and Pat had told me a lot about the horse and they had syndicated him (FDD Dynasty). So, I went by Vessels while he was still out there and looked at him. I was impressed with his conformation. He has a real deep heart and he is long with a lot of leg up under him. He was an up off the ground kind of horse.
“Though my mare never had a problem going 400 or 440 yards, she is a blocky kind of mare,” he continued. “So, I was looking for the combination that would make a well conformed horse that was capable of going down the track. I felt that Dynasty had the conformation that I thought would fit on her real well.”
30 SPEEDHORSE, February 2017
SPEEDLINES