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fairly. In his next three years at stud he booked a few more mares and
his fee remained at $1,000; but as is typical of most unproven stallions, by the third and fourth years mare owners were hesitant to send their best, waiting to see what his first crop of foals would do at the track. What they saw was speed begetting speed. Azure Te qualified two horses for the All American Futurity: Come Six, who had the fastest qualifying time and ran second in the finals to Mr. Kid Charge, both of them breaking the world record of :19.75, and Try who ran seventh in the finals. Try
ran second by a nose in the Rainbow Consolation and qualified for the All American Quarter Horse Congress Futurity, but sustained an injury and was retired. Come Six, a gelding, raced for several years and finally retired with a speed index of 104 and lifetime earnings of $345,300 setting track and world marks in several starts, including the fastest 440 yards recorded by the AQHA (:21.47) to that date as he won the 1972 Rocky Mountain Quarter Horse Association Derby. He was voted horse of
the meet at Ruidoso and earned four championship titles awarded by the American Quarter Horse Association. In the 1972 $50,000 Winner Take All Invitational at Los Alamitos, Come Six bested Osage Rocket, Love Charge, Charger Bar and Kaweah Bar and repeated the win in 1973 along with winning the Los Alamitos Championship.
From Azure Te’s first crop of foals all but one starter was a winner and all that had more than one start
had a speed rating of 80 or better. Jay and Ted had a long list of mare owners who had requested breeding
Te N Te, by Azure Te, sustained an injury to his hock while in race training and was admitted into the AQHA registry through the hardship clause. Later, he won 5 out of 5 Grand Champion Stallion titles and Hi-Point Halter Stallion of the Sun Country Circuit.
contracts without even knowing the fee. Having had no experience with the effect of Azure Te’s success as a racing sire, and unsure of how many would respond to breeding contacts that were already requested, Jay and the syndicate were in doubt as to how much to raise the fee in order to still be assured of filling Azure Te’s book. Further, they were almost afraid to run an ad. They finally set the fee at $1,500, limited the mares to ROM runners or producers, and ran an ad publishing the new fee on December 15, 1971.
They sent night letters to all who still had the breeding contracts out on the horse giving them a deadline for return. Jay said, “I hated to do that in a way, but the contracts could continue to float in on you.” He
also added, “It sure was sweet, but it doesn’t happen very often.”
In January 1972 the Azure Te syndicate ran a second ad reading, “Thank you – booked full” and two-hundred and nine mares were bred to Azure Te that year. They would have liked to have closed his book sooner (and did the following years), but in an effort to be fair, they accepted all mares whose owners returned contracts according to the terms they had set. It was more than they bargained for. In hindsight
Jay admits that the two mistakes they made were in not raising the fee to $2,000 and not being even more restrictive about the quality of mares they bred. If it was an error in judgment, it was a minor one for limiting the book to ROM mares or
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