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SPEEDLINES
When Burnett Ranch decided to be more actively involved,
Peggy Toro was one of the horses brought into their racing program.
This Speedlines will focus on Azure
Te in the scheme of the Burnett racing program. Our look at Azure Te starts with Jay Pumphrey and Ted Wells Jr. and their search for an outcross stallion for the racing American Quarter Horse. They had several potential candidates, but they weren’t available. Then in 1967, a friend of Ted Wells told him about a horse named Azure Te and so they checked him out.
Azure Te was a sprinting Thoroughbred that made 26 starts with 10 wins, 7 seconds and 1 third, earning $119,022. He was a two-time stakes winner in the Debonaire Stakes and the Hollywood Express Handicap at three and the winner of the Lakes And Flowers Handicap at four. He was also stakes placed in four races including a second the $100,000 Del Mar Futurity, now a Grade 1 race, and a second in the Hollywood Juvenile Championship, now a Grade 3 race. He lost the Hollywood Juvenile Championship by a head under a substitute jockey.
Bill McNabb in the article “Azure Te”
in the November 1978 issue of Speedhorse reported that the horse’s trainer Buster Millerick told Pumphrey if he would have had his regular jockey, the outcome of the Juvenile might have been different as he was ridden by a replacement jockey. Millerick gave instructions to “let the horse run his race.” Instead, the jockey fanned the horse out of the gate and lost the race by a head. Millerick confided that if he had won this race, Azure Te might not have been available
like he was as the Thoroughbred industry would have taken a closer look at the horse. Some of the others that had won this race include Affirmed (Triple Crown winner) and Terlingua, dam of leading sire Storm Cat. Yes, it’s true, well-known sprinter Hennessy, a son of Storm Cat, is the sire of Check
Him Out, the winner of the 2001 Ed Burke Memorial Futurity-G1.
McNabb asked Jay what drew them to Azure Te and he replied, “We were most impressed with the quarter times, times away from the gate, half mile times and
the class he was running against.” A fact sheet that accompanied the article showed that in his 26 starts, he was in the lead at the quarter in 18 of them and was beaten at that distance by a head in four of them. At the half, he was in the lead 19 times and beaten at that distance by a head in two of the races. At five furlongs, he was in the lead in 16 of his starts and beaten a head in two of them. His best times at the quarter show that he had a time of :21-2/5 in one race, :21-3/5 in five starts, :21-4/5 in seven of races.
Ted Wells Jr.’s move to being a trainer was mentored by none other than Walter Merrick (shown).
SPEEDHORSE July 2021 41