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From The Quarter Racing Journal,
January 1988 |
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by Richard Chamberlain |
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"There was no
question," said Phillips. "When this colt hit the ground, he was so
perfectly conformed. Most colts, when they are born, are skinny and gangling
and so forth. This colt was, too, of course, but he just had everything
conformed right. I felt then that he was going to be a great horse. I
went back to the house and told my wife that the best horse ever born on the
place had just hit the ground. There was no mistaking him." Dash For Cash had arrived. It wouldn't be long before the
rest of the world would know it, either. In the next few years, the
horse would spread his name across the country, first as a racehorse who's fame rivaled, maybe even surpassed, that of his
legendary ancestor Go Man Go, later as a sire who's offspring have dominated
major league Quarter Horse racing as no other's have since Steel Dust. His
fame continues to grow, as a new generation—sons and daughters of his sons
and daughters—comes to the fore and spreads his
influence even further. |
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Bred and born of the blood of champions, Dash For Cash was by Rocket Wrangler, one of the
finest Quarter Horse sons of the Thoroughbred stallion Rocket Bar, arguably
the best of many outstanding progeny of Three Bars. Rocket Wrangler was out
of the talented stakes-winning Go Man Go mare Go Galla
Go, a gutty little competitor which earned black
type, money and accolades on tracks from Under the careful eye of C.W.
(Bubba) Cascio and the expert ride of Jerry
Nicodemus. "The Wrangler" ran out a quarter of a million dollars in
a career that spanned 10 victories in 23 races over 2 1/2 years. "He was
sure one of the best horses I was ever lucky enough to ride," said
Nicodemus of Rocket Wrangler, a sprinter which put together victories in the
All-American and Rainbow futurities in 1970 to be named the sport's top freshman
colt. Still a stakes horse at age five, Rocket Wrangler ran until the end of
the Horsemen's QHRA meet in January 1973, two seasons after entering the stud
in 1971. Phillips had high regard for
the horse, and was soon taking him mares—some of which weren't his. He and
the King Ranch had worked out a deal whereby Phillips bred certain of the
ranch's mares, and then acted as a partner on the resulting foals. By the
time Rocket Wrangler entered service, it had already proved a profitable
venture: One of the early successes, within two or three years of the
handshake, was Some Kinda Man, a foal of 1969 which
became one of the fastest sons of Go Man Go to ever set hoof on a track. "My arrangements with the
King Ranch was that I would keep those mares, and if they didn't produce to
suit me after one or two colts, I could take them back home, go back through
the mares and get some more," said Phillips. Phillips didn't mind going
through the herd as many times as it took, nor did
he let changing his mind bother him. A student of breeding, Phillips devoured
information on all aspects of horses and how to improve them, from sources as
widely diverse as the firsthand knowledge that comes from his years in the
saddle to the second-and third-hand kind that comes by reading and "The way I pick mares, I
pick first for conformation, and then for pedigree," he said.
"Unless a horse has conformation, I don't think he can really be relied
upon. "You're going to find freaks that have no
conformation and can run or cut, or do whatever you want to do on them, but
as a rule, you're going to have to have some conformation to go along with
it. If that bone structure is not right, the rest of him is not right." Phillips was impressed by
Rocket Wrangler's bone structure, among other things, and during the
stallion's second season at stud, he took to him a Thoroughbred daughter of
To Market, one he'd found while sorting through the King Ranch mares. A
stakes winner himself, To Market was the sire of the juvenile Thoroughbred
champion Hurry To Market, and had sired a number of other Thoroughbred stakes
winners. This particular mare, however, hadn't yet marked herself as of that
class: Named Find A Buyer, she was an earner of $3,134, had won one of her 14
starts and had produced two relatively minor winners from three Thoroughbred
foals. Phillips felt that there might be a little more to her, however, that
she had the kind of conformation and breeding that would benefit from Rocket
Wrangler's. |
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"Dash For Cash's
mother is a third go-round mare, one I found the third time I went through
them," he said. "Rocket Wrangler had a fine head and neck, and the
mare needed help. That's why I bred her to him." The breeding was successful,
phenomenally so, and Phillips knew it right off the bat. "I'd rather see a foal
when he's first born, just about the time he stands for the first time, that
I had when he's two or three months old," he said. "By that time,
he's been on that milk and he's got baby fat on him. But when he first comes
out of that mare, he's nothing but bones and hide, and you can pretty well
tell what he's gonna be right then." Baby fat or not, Phillips
became more convinced of the potential as time went on. "We had a program then,
and we still do now, that we geld most all of our colts," said Phillips.
"That particular year, that fall when we selected our colts, I saved
three of them — Dash For Cash, Windy Ryon and a
horse called "I had 'Dash' running with
other colts in the pasture. One thing that made me so sure about him was that
I'd read a book written by an Italian breeder, Frederico
Tesio, that said the best way to grade your colts
was to go out in the pasture in the morning and in the evening, and watch
them play. The outstanding colt would always lead. Always—the
outstanding colt would be leading the pack, That was
Dash. He never was an aggressive colt, didn't try to push around the others
or anything like that, but you could always tell who was
the best colt." Turned
over to Cascio and Nicodemus, the best colt got to the racetrack as a two-year-old early in
1975. On March 8, Dash For Cash went to post for his first out, a 300-yard
trial for the $45,128 Lubbock Downs Spring Futurity. Marking himself as one
to watch, the bright sorrel won easily by 2 1/4 lengths, clocking the
third-fastest time, a :15.95 that was bettered only by Native Creek's :15.76
and Skibbereen's :15.85, both of which had won their
trials by much closer margins. Jerry Burgess took the mount on
Dash For Cash the finals a week later. Breaking from the 5 post, with Skibbereen to his immediate right and Native Creek a
couple of gates over on the inside, Dash For Cash went to the front. Holding
off Native Creek by a head, with Skibbereen daylighted in third, the colt cruised under the wire in : Dash For Cash also established
a pattern that, in retrospect, would be repeated time and time again over over the next three years: Many fillies that he first met
and defeated on the racetrack, he later met again in the breeding barn. The
field in the Lubbock Futurity, for instance, included Lela Barnes Bug, which,
to his cover in 1980, would produced Cash N Balance,
a stakes winner of $19,576. The breeding barn, of course,
figured in the distant future. Of immediate concern was the colt's next out,
the trials for the upcoming Sun Country Futurity at Another pattern
was emerging: It took a whole lot of racehorse to outshine Dash For
Cash. Of course, outshining Dash For
Cash by clocking a faster time was one thing; actually outrunning him was
quite another. Drawing the outside in the finals, Dash For Cash made short
work of the field, winning by three-fourths of a length in a stakes record :17.37, to add another $75,421 to his account. Taken to Ruidoso, Dash For Cash
racked up a couple of allowance wins, and then contested the trials for the
All-American Futurity. Another easy win, this by a length but in a slow :22.40 at the quarter, qualified the colt for the
$66,000 Second Consolation. Dash was never saddled for the Consolation,
however. Stricken with colic, Dash For Cash nearly died, and was saved only
through a blood transfusion—"about a gallon," said Phillips—from
Rocket Wrangler, which was standing at Buena Suerte
Ranch in Roswell, some 60 miles east of Ruidoso. (Even while sitting out,
however, Dash For Cash was in good company. Two of the three scratches from
the Second Consolation were Windy Ryon and Sold
Short.) Dash didn't waste much time
recuperating, though. Within a couple of weeks after the All-American, Dash
For Cash was standing in the gates at Albuquerque, waiting for the start of
the Jet Deck Handicap while shouldering high weight and conceding three to 10
pounds to a field that included the likes of Flashy Go Moore, Speckled Trace
and Billy Billly Byou.
Another win by a length brought Dash For Cash his eighth consecutive victory
photo. The streak was snapped in his
next out. Cascio took the colt to |
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A classic photograph of a
great champion: Milt |
