Page 129 - Jan2022

THE BACKSIDE
Uncle D winning the All American Juvenile.
YOU’RE A SECOND-GENERATION TRAINER. DO YOU HAVE KIDS ALSO INVOLVED IN THE SPORT?
“My son Tyler, he trains also. He’s got a small string of horses he’s working with, and he’s been going with me to the races for a while and he’s learned quite a bit. I’ve seen people show up at 20 years old and they’re just winning all kinds of races. That wasn’t me.”
WHAT WERE THOSE EARLY YEARS LIKE? WERE THEY A STRUGGLE?
“I started out in 1992 running horses, and I
had a mixed barn, I had Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. I might have won like one or two Quarter Horse races that year, but I ran mostly Thoroughbreds. We ran at Remington and trained for a couple of really good guys and had a lot of good horses. Then my kids got to where they were going to school so we moved back to Sallisaw. I worked there, raising kids up, and learned how to shoe horses. I worked UPS at nights and worked at a stud farm. I did all of the things I could to help raise kids up, and then raise 15 head of horses, too. ... Those early years, it was get up early and come home late. I did whatever I could to help raise the family. I’d train horses in the morning, I’d shoe horses in the afternoon, I’d go to UPS at 7. I’d wash the trucks, check the oil, get them back in their spots and get home and eat at 10 o’clock at night. Then I’d start over again the next day. Every day for a couple years doing those three jobs.”
DO YOU APPRECIATE THE SUCCESS MORE FROM THOSE EARLY STRUGGLES?
“That makes me appreciate everything that I’ve got.
Nothing was given to me. We worked very hard. I worked
hard. And then things started happening. It really
makes you appreciate it when it does.”
YOU MENTIONED UNCLE D AND JESS GOOD CANDY. ANY OTHER HORSES THAT STAND OUT TO YOU? “We had a little mare called Send Me A Candy Tree. She made $400,000 or so. She was a nice little horse. She was the first Grade 1 futurity winner that I had. I really liked that mare.”
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TRACK YOU’VE BEEN TO?
“I like running at Remington Park. That
is one of my favorite Quarter Horse tracks. I’ve got a couple of different places that are sentimental to me. Ajax, back when I first started running over there, I liked it a lot. The purses were really good, and I liked Canada. It was not a bad place. That was pretty good. But my favorite overall track to run at is Remington. I don’t like the night racing too much, but it’s home. I do like
to go to Ruidoso in the summertime. The weather’s good. Yeah, you get some rain out there but there’s a lot of money to be made out there if you get lucky.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF QUARTER HORSE RACING IN GENERAL GOING INTO 2022? “When all this started with COVID, my thoughts were that the bottom’s fixing
to drop out of the industry—of racing in general. But it didn’t. We got to kind of keep running and then when the sales came back around, the sales were at record highs. You couldn’t hardly buy one it was so high. It was unbelievable how it bounced. 2020 was a little bit down, but in 2021 the sales were back up. Hopefully, that will hold out for a little bit. It usually never does, but, anyway, it was surprising to see the market was up so much this year. Now where is racing going? The bad thing about social media is, a lot
of times they don’t report anything but the bad things of racing. It makes things look like racing is a bad thing. There’s a lot of good in racing also. People on the inside see that. You’re out here breaking these colts out, working them, I thrive off that stuff. That’s my favorite time of year: breaking babies, and we break a pile every year.”
WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE GOALS?
“Just keep doing what we’re doing and win some big races along the way. That’d be great. Maybe someday, someone will put me in the Hall of the Fame—just as an accomplishment. I’d love to win the triple crown.”
Clint with Shea, Kara and Tyler.
SPEEDHORSE January 2022 127