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Dash Ta Fame
THE CROSSOVER CONNECTION by Larry Thornton
The story of Dash Ta Fame begins with a young boy and his love of speed. This boy was enamored with speed and how fast a horse could run. It didn’t matter what kind of horse he was riding, he wanted to know how fast that horse could run. The young boy was Bob Burt, who became the breeder and owner of Dash Ta Fame.
Dash Ta Fame, a son of First Down Dash out of the mare Sudden Fame, is an anomaly as a top 25 all-time leading sire of racehorse money earners of over $19 million and the all-time leading sire of barrel racing money earners of over $23 million. He is in the top 20 as a broodmare sire of racehorse money earners in excess of $20 million, and he is the broodmare sire of barrel racers earning over $12 million. This record makes him
the ultimate crossover sire. Now, let’s look at how it all came together for Dash Ta Fame to achieve this level of success.
Bob Burt recently talked about his love
of speed and how that led him to breed Dash Ta Fame. “I have lived in Salt Lake all my
life and I had relatives that lived in a little town called Ridgefield. I would go down there every summer and I liked the horses and the farm, and I had a thing about speed. I had to get on those horses and see how fast they could run. I would get on the riding horses, even the work horses, and I had several uncles, who all had horses. We weren’t lacking for horses. Some a little more special than the others.”
Burt continues on about how he was able to ride the horses. “I would sneak down to the pastures with a bridle and I would see who the fastest was. Nobody ever knew I knew because they would have gotten mad at me because they didn’t want to run the horses, but I would run them. I would catch them in those 100- acre pastures and I would send them down the nice long sandy lane and I knew which ones were the fastest. I never told them because I would have gotten my butt kicked.
“My neighbor Ted Miller ran Thoroughbreds. I was 16 or 17, about to
Dash For Cash
First Down Dash
First Prize Rose
Tiny’s Gay
Sudden Fame
Bar Dearie
graduate, and I started going out to the Fairgrounds at Murray. I started galloping his horses. Then he died and I just went on from there and got a couple of horses. Some guy
got me involved and I had partners running chariots in the winter. I decided then that I had the learning lessons and I needed to move up a notch, so I went to Heritage Place and bought Sudden Fame. Then, I bred her to First Down Dash, and I was lucky to be able to do that.”
When I asked if Sudden Fame was his first attempt at getting a broodmare, he responded, “I had done very little before that. Maybe a couple, but not much.” Then, he
opened up about how he made the decision to buy a mare like Sudden Fame to hopefully improve his chances of getting a better racehorse. “We had Game Plan, the racehorse sire and son of Easy Jet, around here for a while,” he said. “He was hot and in Utah,
he was really hot. I had a friend and a group of us would buy four or five colts, run with the chariots and on the flat track. We would win a couple of races, but it would cost us more to get our picture taken than we won. So, one guy and I decided to go to Heritage Place to buy us a Game Plan and move up
a notch. When we went to buy one there
SPEEDLINES
Rocket Wrangler
Find A Buyer TB
Gallant Jet
Rose Bug
Tiny Watch
Gay’s Delight
Lake Erie TB
Barred Girl
Rocket Bar TB Go Galla Go To Market
Hide And Seek Jet Deck
Leo Jewel
Lady Bug’s Moon Casco Rose Anchor Watch TB Clabber Tiny Rocket Bar TB Miss Ginger Gay War Admiral Sweet Tryst Mackay Boy Barred Hug
Three Bars Golden Rocket Go Man Go
La Galla Win Market Wise Pretty Does *Alibhai Scattered Moon Deck Miss Night Bar Leo
Linda Jewel Top Moon
FL Lady Bug Levan
Prissy Hankins Degage L’Admiralte Clabber II
Tiny Iny TB Three Bars Golden Rocket Palleo Pete Ginger Gay Man O’War Brushup *Jacopo Gentle Tryst Top Deck TB Rosedale Barred
Hug Me Tight
20 SPEEDHORSE May 2020
DASH TA FAME