Page 83 - September 2022

stable lacked a single royally-bred prospect. Then some former Walter Merrick clients, the father and son team of J.R. and Ray Cates, sent Dad a slender two-year-old filly who had won a single non-parimutuel race at Enid, Oklahoma. She moved into the empty stall left
behind by Lena’s Bar, but no two horses could have been more different. Whereas Lena’s Bar was as gentle as a dove, this Savannah Cates was more like an angry alligator. We had to
put a full steel screen in front of her stall to keep her from savaging someone. While Lena’s Bar looked the part of a pure Quarter Horse, Savannah Cates was lean and long and looked more like a Thoroughbred. She was by Everett Jr., a sprinting Thoroughbred, and out of a very fast Quarter Horse mare, Savannah Gray, who had once set a World Record for 220 yards.
But Savannah Cates was much more like her Thoroughbred sire in appearance. And she insisted on being trained that way. We had to gallop her nearly every day just to keep her from being a danger to herself and to those around her. That exercise regimen kept her manageable but no matter how much we tried to shorten
her up, her gate speed improved only a little. However, by three or four strides out of the gate, she could hit a gear that none of our other two- year-olds could find.
Despite her exceptional top-end speed, Savannah Cates had won but a single race at Ruidoso Downs by the time the trials for the All American Futurity arrived. She broke pretty well that day, for her, and ended up being the twelfth-fastest qualifier for the finals. They ran
12-horse finals in those days and I remain a strong advocate for doing so in our major races today. If we can provide our owners with a twenty percent better chance of qualifying for the big money races, we ought to do it!
We had finally qualified a horse to the race we all dreamed of! But that was no assurance of a penny in earnings. They only paid purse money to the top six finishers in those days. Furthermore, there was an also-eligible list,
so any finalist who was scratched for any reason would be replaced by another horse who had initially failed to qualify. That provided a motive for foul play and suspicions were running high. The winner of that year’s Ruidoso Futurity, Faila Tabu, had been fatally poisoned weeks before the All American trials. I had witnessed his autopsy and the thought that someone could do that to eliminate a competitor was an eye-opener for me.
We set up a 24-hour watch on Savannah Cates and rigged all four walls of her stall (above her reach) with wire mesh strung with empty cans and bottles placed to make noise if anyone tried to gain access. Of course, we joked that if anyone entered her stall they’d likely be eaten before they could do her any harm. But the night watch was pretty tense duty for an eleven- year-old and I’ll never forget being visited one night around 2 a.m. by a competing trainer who had a horse on the Also Eligible list for the All American. He was a Cajun from Louisiana, and he was accompanied by three of his hired hands, who were almost as drunk as he was. The man came within a few feet from the blanket I had
spread on a
mean to tell me this man leave just a little boy to watch over this here filly? I bet you gets sleepy sometime, don’t you? Heh, heh.”
I don’t know if they were there to do any harm but when I told Dad about it the next morning he went straight to that trainer’s barn and gave him a thorough understanding of what would happen if he or any of his hands were to enter our stable again. Reports of that one-sided chat lit up the racetrack gossip mill.
In the meantime, the Three Bars dominance seemed to be holding. He had sired three qualifiers to the big race and sure enough, Bunny’s Bar Maid was all she was cracked up
to be. She arrived in Ruidoso undefeated, and she won her trial and set the fastest qualifying time for the All American Futurity while another California invader, Golden Note,
was the second-favorite among the betting public when Labor Day finally arrived. When the moment arrived and the gates crashed open, all eyes were on the two favorites until the final hundred yards when a bright sorrel colt took command with authority. It was a colt who had just gotten to the races, a colt no one was talking about. He was by Three Bars and his mother, Pokey Vandy, had been a top notch racemare. His name was Pokey Bar and he would go on to be a truly great
bale of hay and said, “You don’t
SPEEDHORSE September 2022 81
Speedhorse Archives
Pokey Bar wins the 1961 All American Futurity. Savannah Cates, finished in
6th place