Page 61 - April 2016

Racing newcomers Bobby and Catherine Simmons hit the ground running
by Diane Rice
were going to buy some horses. They had a trainer choosing horses for the group, and Bobby and I didn’t have a say in which horses were bought for the partnership.
“We didn’t look at (Foxy Moonflash) before she came into the ring. In fact, we didn’t look at the book before the sale or look at any other horses before the sale. We didn’t buy any other horses that year, except the percentages we owned in the partnership horses.
“Bobby and I were sitting at the sale and I started looking at the stats in the sale book. Being an engineer, data is my thing! Foxy walked into the ring with a bandage on one of her ankles that they announced was just a superficial injury. I looked at her page and asked Bobby, ‘What’s wrong with her?’ He said, ‘I don’t know, do you want her?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ and the rest is history!”
Catherine & Bobby Simmons
hen Catherine Bedwell, a
chemical engineer, started dating oilfield contractor and lifelong roper Bobby Simmons in 2010, she’d never owned a horse. But
along with his ambition, work ethic and intelligence, Bobby’s cowboy ways won her over. Not long after, they ventured into the world of Quarter Horse racing and married in 2013.
“We took up racing as a hobby and turned it into a job somehow,” Bobby says. “I’m the world’s worst for getting into something and getting totally into it!”
Their trainer, C. Dwayne “Sleepy” Gilbreath, agrees. “It looks to me like anything they do, they’re all out. They’re wide open in anything they go at.”
After buying their first racehorse, they branched into training and breeding out of their Rocking S Racing Stables near Possum Kingdom Lake in Strawn, Texas, now home
to “Sleepy” Gilbreath, James Lackey and Rudy Valles’ training operation. Bobby and Catherine also still operate their oilfield construction business at their Midland, Texas home base.
Their First Racehorse
Bobby and Catherine started out by buying Foxy Moonflash, a 2011 New Mexico filly out of Diamonds N Rainbows by Rabbits Rainbow, and by freshman
sire First Moonflash - who that year also sired 2013 All American Futurity winner Handsome Jack Flash and 2014 All American Derby winner Too Flash For You.
“(When we went to the Ruidoso
Select Yearling Sale in 2012), I knew nothing about horses,” Catherine says,
“- especially nothing about race horses!
It was completely God’s blessing that I picked ‘Foxy.’ We’d gone to the sale because Bobby was partnered with a few guys that
Foxy Moonflash as a yearling
SPEEDHORSE, April 2016 59