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Leslie Simmons, Speedhorse
Powerful Favorite winning the All American Gold Cup-G1 at Ruidoso Downs.
Los Alamitos
Los Alamitos
Fire At Will winning the Los Alamitos Winter Derby-G1.
Connie with trainer Chris O’Dell after winning the Los Alamitos Winter Derby-G1.
‘Well, if we had better horses, we wouldn’t have to put them in claiming races.’ I don’t think I’ve had a claiming horse since he passed!”
They eventually bought a ranch in Hemet, California, where they lived for 10 years until they bought their present ranch about 10 miles west in Winchester, where they bred, boarded and raised horses.
STAKES-WINNING STATUS— WITH A BANG
After Blane passed away in 2010, Bob and Connie placed their runners with Christopher O’Dell. It was under Chris’s tutelage that Rosenthal Ranch’s Fire At Will (Favorite Cartel- What Fire, Walk Thru Fire, foaled in 2013) became their first stakes horse after running second in the Los Alamitos Juvenile Stakes in 2015 and winning the Los Alamitos Winter Derby-G1 the following February.
But the joy of his win was short-lived; unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the colt had sustained a knee fracture sometime before he crossed the Derby finish line and had to be put down after his win.
It was around that time that Bob and Connie, faced with the challenges of taxing nighttime foalings, decided to stop breeding and instead purchase their runners. In fact, it was a mare due to foal that kept them from attending Fire At Will’s bittersweet final win. “We had a moment of jubilation where we jumped and screamed and yelled, and then Fire At Will was gone,” Connie says. “Chris said he was glad we weren’t there, and I think that it truly was a blessing.”
In 2017, Rosenthal Ranch’s wins graph began a steep upward climb when Bob and Connie bought Powerful Favorite, a 2016 son of Favorite Cartel out of the Corona Cartel daughter Remember Me Rose.
Powerful Favorite, bred by James Markum and Steve Burns, won 19 of 35 starts with seven seconds and three thirds, earning $1,226,875 over five years.
His accomplishments include a win in the Governor’s Cup Futurity-G2 and qualification to the Golden State Million Futurity-G1 and the Los Alamitos 2 Million Futurity-G1 his first year out—sadly, shortly after Bob passed away. He never got to see his horse run.
Powerful Favorite’s sophomore year, he won the first seven of eight races, including his trials and the finals for the Los Alamitos Winter Derby-G1, El Primero Del Ano Derby-G3 and Governor’s Cup Derby-G3, and his trial for the Los Alamitos Super Derby-G1, placing runner-up in the G1 Final.
At four, Powerful Favorite won his Vessels Maturity trial and the Go Man Go Handicap-G1, and ran third in the Champion of Champions Stakes-G1. The following year, he won the Brad McKinzie Winter Championship Stakes-G1, ran second in the Mr. Jet Moore Handicap-G2 and won the Robert L. Boniface Los Alamitos Invitational Championship Stakes-G1. At 6, he repeated his Mr. Jet Moore Handicap-G2 win and crossed the wire first in the All American Gold Cup Stakes-G1 and the Z. Wayne Griffin Directors’ Handicap.
Although Connie is often credited with buying Powerful Favorite, she says Bob had made the decision; she merely followed through. “Someone else was also bidding on the horse and when it got to $90,000 and Bob didn’t raise his hand, I asked him if he didn’t want him,” Connie says. “He said he didn’t know if we should spend that much so I
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