Page 82 - Speedhorse April 2021

SPEEDLINES
Paul Jones, along with Terry Thompson of Thompson Racing Stable, bred Favorite Cartel.
“My breeding program is really small, but I also bred Foose who earned $1.6 million and he is a leading sire... So, for a little breeding program I have had quite a bit of success.” – Paul Jones
So, we were getting down to the point where everything had First Down Dash or Corona Cartel or Mr Jess Perry. If you had a mare that was by First Down Dash and out a Mr Jess Perry mare and out of this and that you get to the point, ‘Who do you breed her to?’ The outcrosses weren’t there and pretty soon you were taking the top four or five stallions going back and forth. So, for me, in my opinion, the industry was crying out for another Thoroughbred outcross.”
He then explained, “The thing is with the Thoroughbred outcrosses, it is very rare that one works because you can breed to 20 Thoroughbred horses and not get one that will nick with the Quarter Horses.”
This is where fate stepped in and Jones found a potential outcross. He continued, “R. D. Hubbard sent me two horses to train. They were Tricky Dust and Prankster CF, and they were both by Favorite Trick out of a Dash For Cash mare. Johnny Jones had Favorite Trick in Kentucky. He was Horse of the Year and he ended up moving him to Florida because he wasn’t hitting good enough with the Thoroughbreds. They had done that experimental breeding with a Dash For Cash mare and they got Tricky Dust and Prankster.”
Here is what he found with Tricky Dust
and Prankster CF. “They started out with Sleepy Gilbreath and I got them later. Both of those horses were really nice. They could run anywhere from 300 yards to 870 yards. Tricky Dust qualified to the Rainbow Futurity when Sleepy had them, and when I had Prankster, he ran a :17.49 at Ruidoso going 350 yards and outran some pretty nice horses. They were really good boned, good tempered horses. I was so impressed with them.”
The success of Tricky Dust and Prankster CF led to the following. “R. D. Hubbard and I were talking one day, and we got to talking about seeing if we could acquire Favorite Trick. So, he made some phone calls and found out the horse was in Florida and he
was for sale. R. D. Hubbard and I ended up buying the horse, and we brought him to New Mexico, and we syndicated him. He was the perfect horse to breed to Shenoshercorona.”
Jones had a second Favorite Trick colt bred by his breeding program. “I had another one. His name was Shear Genius. We raised Shear Genius with Favorite Cartel and I thought
he was just as good. He was a half-brother to Foose out of Summertime Quickie. In his first race at Ruidoso, he ran second and had
a good race but blew the turn and almost hit the outside rail. The jockey jumped off and the colt flipped and hit his head and it killed him. He never got the chance to do anything. There was a point Shear Genius was showing more promise than Favorite Cartel.”
The success of Favorite Trick on the
Jones training barn didn’t end with Favorite Cartel and Shear Genius. He added this, “I got Gianna Samaja from Brazil, one of my clients, to breed Queen of Appeals to Favorite Trick and that produced Good Reason SA. He won the Two-Million and the Champions of Champions. So, I had Good Reason and Favorite Cartel in that same year, and they were both phenomenal horses. Good Reason was going to go on and have a similar career as a stallion, as he had already sired an All American winner.”
Jones shows a lot of respect for Favorite Cartel with this statement of how the
horse fulfilled his goal of breeding an outcross, “Favorite Cartel went on and his running career was good. He qualified for the Rainbow and the All American, and I thought he was my best chance to win the All American and he ended up fourth. I won it with Runnningbrook Gal, but I thought Favorite Cartel was a little more talented. He didn’t quite get away from the gate as good.”
Favorite Cartel made 25 starts over three years of racing with nine wins, two seconds and four thirds and earnings of $607,669.
His wins at two included his All American Futurity trial and his Rainbow Futurity trial. He came back in the finals of these two races with a third in the Rainbow Futurity-G1 and a fourth in the All American Futurity-G1. His three-year-old year shows that he had eight starts with a stakes win in the Paul B. Ford Memorial Handicap at 550 yards to get his first stakes win. He was a finalist that year in several stakes, including a fifth in both the Los Alamitos Super Derby-G1 and the Rainbow Derby-G1. He was also a finalist in the All American Derby-G1. His third year on the track brought two more stakes wins with the AQHA Challenge Championships-G1 at Los Alamitos and the Los Alamitos Championship Challenge-G2. He was also third in the SLM Big Daddy Stakes. Again, he was a multiple stakes finalist including the Champion of Champions-G1, Remington Park Invitational Championship-G1 and The Championship at Sunland Park-G1.
80 SPEEDHORSE April 2021