Page 155 - February 2021

The racetrack not only operated through its entire season, it also shattered records with a 271.8% increase in pari-mutuel handle and helped introduce people all over the world
to American Quarter Horse racing. He then used that experience to guide health and safety protocols and operations in Grand Prairie, Texas, when its season opened.
The Thoroughbred Racing Association of Oklahoma also recognized Matt Vance for his perseverance in keeping horse racing alive and strong here throughout this two-year pandemic.
In 2021, he was named Executive Vice President of Racing at Remington Park as well as at Lone Star Park. As Executive Vice President for both tracks, he will oversee all pari-mutuel/ simulcasting, operations, track maintenance and racing operations.
SCOTT WELLS
Scott Wells was born into a family of horsemen in Pawhuska, OK, seeing his first horse races at the Osage County Fairgrounds in 1953. His father, 2009 Oklahoma Quarter Horse Hall of Fame inductee Ted Wells Jr., worked in a feed store, drove a water truck and roped calves for a living, often match racing his roping horses against other cowboys. Prominent horse owners observed his skills, which led to a career in 1956 training race horses full time. Scott, his mother Coke, and sisters Terry and Sharon, moved locations around the county where the race horse meets were located.
After the All American Futurity was first run in 1959, Ted Wells moved his family to Ruidoso, NM, in 1960. After a discouraging first season, the Wells Stable acquired better horses, culminating with winning the 1965 All American Futurity with Savannah Jr owned by Tulsa, OK residents Ray and J. R. Cates. Scott served as assistant trainer during that time and credits that victory as his lifetime inspiration.
Ted campaigned Savannah Jr to honors as World Champion Two-Year-Old Colt of 1965 and World Champion Three-Year-Old Colt of 1966. Ted formed the Wells Ranch breeding farm first in Texas, then in Wayne, OK and finally in Alex, OK. The ranch bred more than 600 mares annually to their compliment of stallions.
Scott Wells earned a debate scholarship to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. After being voted debater of the year, he left TCU his junior year to travel to Europe. While in France, Scott re-discovered his passion for horse racing. Upon his return to the U.S., he met with a new horse trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, who hired him to be his assistant at the Los Alamitos Race Course.
After a record-breaking year with Lukas, Scott began his own racing stables in the early 1970s. He was offered and accepted an assistant position to legendary Thoroughbred trainer Jack Van Berg. The JBV Stables won a record 96 races in 1976, a North American record which stood for 28 years. When Scott returned to training on his
own in 1978, he won the Oklahoma Futurity, following in his father’s footsteps. When pari- mutuel racing made its debut in 1984, Scott trained the winner of the state’s first pari-mutuel Throughbred race with an Oklahoma bred mare, Ye Song. Later in this year, Scott accepted an offer to train in a private stable in Fair Hill, MD. His success led to taking on outside horses and raced in 14 different states over a period of 18 years.
Scott first visited Remington Park in the fall of 1988. It made an unforgettable impression. Two years later he disbanded his string of East Coast Thoroughbred in order to do a six-month experiment working in the track’s publicity department in 1990. Three years later he was hired as assistant general manager of Hollywood Park in California and was then promoted to general manager of Ruidoso Downs. Hired in 1999 by Lone Star Park, he helped to open the national racetrack of Mexico, the Hipodromo de las Americas.
Wells was then sent to Uruguay to oversee the reopening of their national racetrack, Hipodromo Maronas. He and his wife, Mellyn, lived there until early 2005 when the opportunity was offered to return to Remington Park, this time as general manager. In the ensuing four years, he witnessed Remington Park emerge as one of North America’s top three tracks, as rated by the Horseplayers Association of North America. Wells moved back to Oklahoma and has lived here even when he held the same leadership role for Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie, Texas, from 2013-2021.
Wells credits his father and other notables like Jack Van Berg, D. Wayne Lukas and Richard Hazelton for his success while training race horses. Once he went into track management, he was fortunate to work for David Vance, Corey Johnsen and R.D. Hubbard, which he felt also contributed to his success.
While at Remington Park, Wells oversaw more than 600 employees at a beautiful facility which has only recently recaptured its place of popularity in the regional marketplace. Opened in 1988, Remington Park was the state’s most popular tourist attraction until tribal casinos proliferated on an unprecedented scale. That proliferation left Remington Park business in steep decline. Magna Entertainment Corporation purchased the track in 1999 in the hopes that authorization for slot machines at racetracks would eventually occur. That became a reality in November of 2004 when the voters of Oklahoma passed such legislation
by a 60%-40% margin. Oklahoma now has 104 casinos. All of them, except Remington Park, are owned by tribes. However, even in the face of such competition, the racetrack is resurgent.
Wells retired from track management at the end of 2021, choosing to spend more time with his family and particularly with his wife, Mellyn, and their young grandsons. Already the author of three racing related books, he is currently working on another.
KC Montgomery Photographics
PYC Paint Your Wagon
Don Ed Roberts
Matt Vance
Scott Wells
SPEEDHORSE February 2022 153
Bee Silva Speedhorse Archives