Page 91 - July 2020

4-time Champion Come Six, a gelding from Azure Te’s first crop of foals, set a world record of :21.47 winning the Rocky Mountain Quarter Horse Assoc. Derby. He retired with gross earnings of $345,300.
winners or stakes producers. Speed begets speed and Azure Te is as convincing an argument for that truism as any horse on earth, both in his lineage and his sire record.
The Azure Te Syndicate arranged for Ted Wells to stand the horse and in 1968, his first year at stud, and with little advertising time, Azure Te stood for a fee of $1,000 and bred
41 mares. Many of the mares belonged to syndicate owners and, as he was an unproven sire, there were only a few good ones booked
to him. The syndicate made a point of sticking to their stud fee and treating all comers fairly.
In his next three years at stud he booked a few more mares and his fee remained at $1,000;
but as is typical of most unproven stallions, by the third and fourth years mare owners were hesitant to send their best, waiting to see what his first crop of foals would do at the track. What they saw was speed begetting speed. Azure Te qualified two horses for the All American Futurity: Come Six, who had the fastest qualifying time and ran second in the finals to Mr. Kid Charge, both of them breaking the world record of :19.75, and Try who ran seventh in the finals. Try ran second by a nose in the Rainbow Consolation and qualified for the All American Quarter Horse Congress Futurity,
but sustained an injury and was retired. Come Six, a gelding, raced for several years and finally retired with a speed index of 104 and lifetime earnings of $345,300 setting track and world marks in several starts, including the fastest
440 yards recorded by the AQHA (:21.47) to that date as he won the 1972 Rocky Mountain Quarter Horse Association Derby. He was
voted horse of the meet at Ruidoso and earned four championship titles awarded by the American Quarter Horse Association. In the 1972 $50,000 Winner Take All Invitational at Los Alamitos, Come Six bested Osage Rocket,
fastest horses he had ever seen. Azure Te’s regular jockey had been set down and Millerick opted to run the horse in the Hollywood Juvenile Championship with a substitute. He instructed the jockey to let the horse run his own race, but Azure Te left the gate with the rider fanning him with the whip. He ran second and Millerick
told Jay he cost Azure Te that race by using
the substitute jockey. Now, suppose Azure Te’s jockey had ridden him and he’d won that stakes race. And suppose that he’d been a head in front of Terry’s Secret in the Del Mar Futurity instead of the other way around. Both were $100,000 stakes races and winning them would have moved Azure Te into greater prominence in the Thoroughbred world. From the publicity of those two races alone it is doubtful that Azure Te would have been affordable as a Quarter Horse sire. I don’t mean to minimize Azure
Te’s racing carrer for it was far from shabby.
He won the Debonair Stakes at Hollywood
Park defeating his half-brothers Nasharco and Chiclero. Azure Te was the only three year old in the 1965 Hollywood Express Handicap which he led all the way and won by two open lengths. He led the Hollywood Lakes and Flowers Handicap wire to wire and had career earnings of $199,022. In twenty-six lifetime starts he led at the quarter in 18 and was beaten by a head
in 4; led at the half in 19 and was beaten by
a head in 2, led at five furlongs in 16 and was beaten by a head in two. Azure Te’s best times at the quarter and a half were 21-2/5 and 44-1/5; five furlongs 56 1/5, five and one-half furlongs 1:02-3/5, six furlongs 1:09 flat and seven furlongs 1:22-3/5. Few horses consistently run five furlongs in under :57 as Azure Te did. His speed is backed by a pedigree of speed in which sixty-one of the sixty-two horses in the first five generations of his family tree were either stakes
LOOKING BACK
Azure Three wins the 1977 Los Alamitos Derby.
SPEEDHORSE July 2020 89