Page 114 - April_2023

SPEEDLINES
112 SPEEDHORSE April 2023
Bud Warren purchased Leo for $3,100 in 1947.
Ted Wells and Scott Wells
and Lady reportedly ran head and head for 200 yards with Lady pulling away to win by more than 1/2-length. Rowe and Michaelis had pulled off the impossible - they had beaten Leo.
Enrique Salinas bought Leo when it became hard to match him in Oklahoma and took
him back to Eagle Pass to race. His success as
a racehorse again made it hard to match Leo,
so Salinas leased or sent him to Mexico to race. Leo’s race record in Mexico is not known but his racing career came to an end when he was injured in a trailer accident that nearly
cut off his front legs. Reports show that Helen Michaelis was responsible for Leo’s recovery from the trailer accident. Helen was the wife of Max Michaelis, the owner of Punkin. She was also the second Executive Secretary for the American Quarter Horse Association.
Salinas sold Leo to Bill Rowe, and he returned to Oklahoma. Bob Gray, in his biography of Leo “The Story of Leo,” in
the Horseman magazine, November 1967, indicated that Rowe leased Leo to August W. Lohman of Foraker, Oklahoma, as a breeding stallion. This must have been in 1944 as Leo sired his first AQHA official crop of foals in 1945. His first crop includes 15 foals with eight of them bred by Lohman. Leo was
still in Oklahoma in 1945 as his 1946 crop appear to be bred in that state.
Rowe sold his ranch in Oklahoma, and he sent Leo to his new ranch in New Mexico. Enroute, the train car housing Leo and
some household goods were sidetracked and lost. Leo was found with his head sticking
through the bed springs and he was very thirsty and hungry.
This train mishap didn’t end the trials and tribulations of Leo, as he had to make another trip. Rowe found that his new ranch was not suited to standing a stallion and Leo came back to Oklahoma. A recent visit with Scott Wells tells us how his father Ted Wells Jr. and his grandfather Ted Wells Sr. were involved in bringing Leo back to Oklahoma. Scott recounted the story this way. “Dad and my grandfather had seen Leo run at Pawhuska and were impressed by him. They had heard that he hurt that knee and he wasn’t going to race anymore. My grandfather and some of his friends, Gene Moore and Dr. Tillman, located the horse and bought him for 1,000 bucks with four bronc mares in the deal. This was right after the War in late ‘45.
“They sent my dad to Carlsbad, New Mexico, to pick the horse and the mares up with a bobcat cattle truck,” he continued. “Gobb Strauss, the father of Eldridge Strauss of Go Man Go and Hustling Man fame, had the horse there at Carlsbad. Dad said Leo was as broke as he could be. So, he tied Leo in the front of the truck and tied some boards in the slats between them to make a partition, and he put the mares loose in the box behind him.
“So, he got on the road back to Pawhuska from Carlsbad and somewhere outside Roswell, New Mexico, on a two-lane highway here came a car right down the middle of
the road,” Scott continued. “Dad laid on the horn and flashed his lights but just had no choice but to take the truck off the side of the road. You know that is pretty flat country and all the horses shifted their weight. Dad said it felt like he was on two wheels instead of four. He said that just fortunately the shoulder of the road was on a grade that it kept him from turning over and it pushed him back out on the road. He stopped and threw up as that was the most scared he had ever been. He said he had thought about it many times, if that truck had turned over there never would have been a Leo.”
Scott tells us how Leo came back to Oklahoma and what happened next. “They bred their ranch mares to him and whatever else. I don’t know if they even charged anything to breed to him that first year or two. Then Bud Warren got interested in him and bought him for $3,100. They thought they had made a hell of a deal. Tripled their money. And the rest is history.”
Leo was transferred to Bud Warren in September of 1947. The registration
application for Leo tells us that he was registered when owned by John Tilman and transferred to Enrique Salinas in July 1943. Things seemed to be moving fast, as there is no record that he was transferred to Rowe or any of the men that owned him in between 1943 and 1947. It was Salinas that signed the transfer to Bud Warren.
Scott Wells went on to explain the role a son of Leo had on the training career of Ted Wells Jr. “Dad owned the first son of Leo and his real name was Leo Jr, but they called him Little Leo. Dad was working for the Bateman Ranch and Mr. Bateman had dad take some horses to Ruidoso. As a part of his benefits, he was able to take that colt with him. He won a 770-yard race with him, and I guess that would have been his first win as a trainer outside of match races and roping horses.”
Wells went on to train many good horses including Bob’s Folly for Walter Merrick; Peggy Toro for the Burnett Ranches; Lena’s
After Leo was injured in a trailer accident in Mexico, Helen Michaelis was responsible his recovery.
© Courtesy Larry Thornton
© Speedhorse Archives
© Speedhorse Archives