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but his career could have failed to become such a legendary career had it not been for a certain incident.
“I was surprised and very happy when Walter Merrick called me and asked me if I’d take some of his coming two-year-olds to race in California,” recalled McArthur. “There
was no one I respected more as a horseman.
I drove from California to Sayre, Oklahoma, and I went out with Walter and looked over this impressive bunch of colts and fillies in some run up pens. He told me to pick out any three I wanted, and I could take them back
to California with me. Most of them were by Easy Jet and out of good mares, so it was hard to separate them. But after a while I picked out the three I liked best and was about to load
the last of them onto the trailer when Walter stopped me. He said, ‘Wait a minute, James.
I think you might have overlooked one. You might ought to take that lop-eared filly over there.’ Well, that moment changed my life. The lop-eared filly was Easy Date. She wasn’t the prettiest one of the bunch and she didn’t have the fanciest mama, but Walter’s instincts were right. She was the runner, all right.”
In the decades which have passed since her prime, many have forgotten what a truly great runner Easy Date was. But as a racehorse she was practically unbeatable. She won 22 of 29 career starts, traveling from California to the Mountain and back repeatedly, dodging no one.
Beginning with the first two-year-old
races at Bay Meadows, then moving on to
Los Alamitos, Easy Date romped through
the competition, winning 5 of her 6 starts by midsummer and capturing the state’s richest futurities. Normally, that stellar record would have made her the odds-on favorite to win
the All American Futurity-G1. But 1974 was not a normal year. Even after winning her All American trial race, Easy Date was not the betting favorite to the all-important final. That honor fell to a colt with an even better record— Tiny’s Gay, who had won all 12 of his starts, including the Kansas and Rainbow Futurities, the first two-thirds of the sport’s Triple Crown. One more win would make him the first to achieve the Crown. Veteran trainer Larry Sharp
Easy Date’s owner/breeder Walter Merrick.
and jockey John Ward were confident they would win on what they had stamped as their home field.
Tiny’s Gay was normally a super quick gate horse, but he made the slight- est of mistakes on that legendary Labor
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“I was surprised and very happy when Walter Merrick called me and asked me if I’d take some of his coming two year olds to race in California. There was no one I respected more as a horseman. -James McArthur
Tiny’s Gay winning the 1974 Rainbow Futurity-G1 at Ruidoso Downs.
© Speedhorse Archives
© Speedhorse Archives
© Speedhorse Archives