Racing Quarter Horses in Kentucky: Past, present and future
Rich Wilcke, Sprint Racing Coordinator, Kentucky Quarter Horse Association

Sport of Sprint Racing

The genetics and biomechanics of racehorses are such that stamina and speed tend to be biological tradeoffs. Leaving aside such ancillary factors as blood-flow abnormalities or mental competitiveness, the pure biomechanics of speed in racehorse is a function of two main factors, the length of stride and the frequency of stride.

Length of stride is obviously a function of size, skeletal structure, and balance, while the frequency of stride is almost entirely a function of muscle distribution and fiber type. So-called “fast-twitch” muscle fibers are precisely what allow sprinters to manifest a higher-than-average stride frequency. Even when the length of their stride is significantly shorter, their frequency of stride enables them to get to the lead easily.

Compared to most runners, sprinters tend to be thicker and more heavily muscled. The reason is that fast-twitch muscle fibers are considerably bulkier than slow-twitch fibers, so that prominent muscling, especially in the forearms, gaskins, stifles and shoulders, is a trademark of horses that exhibit high stride frequency. Quarter Horses, even when their pedigrees are mainly Thoroughbred, exemplify this conformation.

At the other extreme are those horses, especially Arabians, which excel in competitions of endurance of up to 100 miles. These horses appear lightly muscled but biopsies confirm that the main difference is their lower-than-average ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers. Because slow-twitch muscles are flat rather than thick and bulky, these animals appear much more lightly muscled than they actually are.

Top endurance horses are able to maintain a strenuous pace over mountain trails for days. They can do this because their fast-twitch muscle ratio is low. Fast-twitch fibers create an excess of lactic acid, which causes muscle fatigue (which is why sprinters tend to hit the wall so soon). Slow-twitch muscle fibers, however, are efficient utilizers of energy, thereby minimizing fatigue. In racing, speed and stamina are opposing forces.

One of the primary reasons that Thoroughbred breeding is so challenging is that breeders are trying to achieve the ideal balance between speed and stamina. The Classic distance of a mile and a quarter requires sufficient fast-twitch fibers for speed but not so many that fatigue becomes a factor long before the finish line. Runners with so-called “cheap speed” produce lactic acid too readily for most Thoroughbred races of any length.

The sport of sprint or “quarter” racing, which began prominently in the Virginia colonies before the Revolution, resulted from a few heavily muscled Thoroughbred studs, namely Janus, imported from England, with only “cheap speed.” Having no formal ovals but plenty of straight and level dirt roads (or streets), these colonists began competing and breeding for one attribute: pure, unadulterated, fast-twitch muscle-fiber speed.

When horses of this type were taken out west, they were found to be the ideal mounts for cattlemen. They were short, sturdy and extremely quick. Plus, they had sufficient endurance for working on cattle ranches since they rested periodically. Short bursts of a few hundred yards to catch a calf were followed by periods of rest, during which lactic acid levels were flushed from their muscles. The tradeoff between stamina and speed occurs when exertion must be sustained, as in the Kentucky Derby or in a 100-mile endurance race.

Beginning in the 19th century, the U.S. Army placed many good Thoroughbred stallions at Remount Stations across the West to encourage the improvement of better horses for ranchers, with the idea that they would be available for military use through sale (or confiscation through eminent domain) when required. One privately owned Thoroughbred stallion named Steel Dust was so ideal in type and versatility that the American Quarter Horse Association, when founded in 1940, nearly became the “Steel Dust Horse” association.

Even before the founding of the AQHA, the racing of sprint horses was a popular sport, especially in southwest states. In those decades, there was little distinction among the fanciers of sprinters between Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. They were searching for speed, hence the type. Indeed, the AQHA spent several decades coming to a final accommodation for fanciers of sprinting horses who wanted full access to Thoroughbred blood. To this day, Quarter Horses are allowed one parent to be registered with The Jockey Club. The option is inconsequential for the show and pleasure crowd but vital to those of us in racing.

Over the years, there have been more than two- dozen Thoroughbred sires that have had a significant impact on racing Quarter Horses. These range from Three Bars (TB), whose Quarter Horse breed contributions earned him a commemorative plaque at the Kentucky Horse Park, to the more recent Beduino (TB), whose prepotency as a sire of top sprinters has been unparalleled. The Quarter Horse breeding-for-racing industry has a clear advantage in being able to look to the Thoroughbred breed continually for new outcrosses.

Another advantage of Quarter Horse racing is that the opportunity to put an emphasis on speed, with only limited emphasis on stamina, makes success somewhat easier to achieve. This fact, in combination with use of artificial insemination, has helped maintain the economics of the Quarter Horse breeding-for-racing business at a lower level than Thoroughbreds. Even a middle-class family can participate in the sport when they can own a producing mare, run a racehorse, or even breed to a top-ten stallion for $5,000 to $10,000.

Today, crossover between Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred racing is common. Many of today’s Thoroughbred owners, from Johnny Jones to Mike Pegram, got their start in the Quarter Horse business. D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert both started as Quarter Horse trainers. Plus, a number of racing states have mixed meets. Quarter Horse racing has served as an entryway to the sport of Thoroughbred racing for decades, and still does.

Quarter Horses and beef cattle have had a special connection for over a century. The fact that Kentucky has over a million beef cows, making it the largest beef cattle producing state east of the Mississippi, may help to explain why Kentucky also has such a large number of registered Quarter Horses, as confirmed by AQHA’s owner data. Quarter Horse racing has the potential to provide a logical cultural bridge between the Thoroughbred industry, concentrated in a handful of central Kentucky counties, and more widespread agriculture.

Sanctioned Racing of Quarter Horses

Following the opening of Tucson’s Rillito Park in 1943, Quarter Horse racing began to change gradually from a regional non-pari-mutuel sport found at “bush” tracks into an AQHA-sanctioned pari-mutuel sport with a circuit of quality racetracks around the country. Advocates of Quarter Horse racing met with owners and managers of many tracks. Most were not harness because of regional issues – that sport was more common in eastern states – and, besides, most such tracks were not suitable either because of their configuration, their length or their surface (or all three) to accommodate Quarter Horse racing.

Frank Vessels, a former Kentuckian, who moved to southern California as a young man in the 1920s, was among the more prominent advocates of Quarter Horse racing. In 1947, he got Hollywood Park to stage a quarter-mile match race between a Thoroughbred runner named Fair Truckle, and a registered Quarter Horse mare named Barbara B. When Barbra B won it handily, the media made a big thing of Quarter Horse racing in southern California then being run at both Hollywood Park and Pomona. Vessels went on to build Los Alamitos in Orange County, which was awarded its initial pari-mutuel license in 1951. Running mostly Quarter Horses year round, Los Alamitos is the leading Quarter Horse track today.

By 1953, there were 32 tracks; most of them in western states, offering approved Quarter Horse racing. Purses totaled $776,410 with a pari-mutuel handle of $16,187,000. By 1955, total purses for Quarter Horse racing topped $1 million nationally, while thirteen years later, in 1968, purses reached $7,283,614 nationally while the on-track pari-mutuel wagering handle on Quarter Horses topped $82 million. Clearly, the sport was growing.

Quarter Horse racing grew in western states where it had a tradition, and also where the opposition to it was least adamant. During the 1950s and 1960s, the efforts to get Quarter Horse racing established in eastern states, such as New York, Florida, and even Kentucky, were either unsuccessful or short lived. Several periods of Quarter Horse racing in Florida (harness track) and New York (special track) in those decades met limited success, partly because of opposition politically from competing tracks and Thoroughbred horsemen.

In Kentucky, a brief offering of Quarter Horse racing at Latonia Race Track in Florence in the late 1950s invoked immediate opposition from Thoroughbred horsemen and management abandoned the idea for a full decade. It was not until 1969 that Quarter Horse racing was begun seriously in the Commonwealth. In that year, there were 218 Quarter horse races run at Latonia with a purse average of about $1,000 and $1.4 million in handle. Latonia ran Quarter Horses for three more years: 222 races – 1970 (24 days), 270 races – 1971 (29 days), and 259 races – 1972 (28 days). Purses and handle continued at about the same level.

In 1977 and 1978, Quarter Horse racing moved to what was then called “Commonwealth Park” in Louisville. This track on the west side of town 46 days of Quarter Horse racing in 1977 with 445 races and a handle of slightly over $5.2 million. The following year, while there were only 32 days of racing and 315 races, purses increased from $465,000 to $541,000, attracting a higher quality population of runners. The economics of racing, especially at this track, given its real estate value, were not enough to keep Commonwealth Park afloat.

Quarter Horse racing in Kentucky was re-established in 1984 when Bluegrass Downs in Paducah ran a 33-day meet that featured 267 races, $390,000 in purses, and a handle on Quarter Horses of just over $2 million. There was a two-year hiatus before Quarter Horses came back to Paducah with a 70-day meet in 1987. The pari-mutuel handle was just under $6.5 million, there were over 1,300 starters, and the purse total approached $1 million. Bluegrass Downs continued to run Quarter Horses for the next five years until 1992.

From 1988 to 1990, years in which Quarter Horses were running at Bluegrass Downs in Paducah, there were also meets held at Riverside Downs in Henderson. In 1988, as an example, there was an 81-day Quarter Horse meet at Bluegrass Downs in Paducah and a 59-day meet at Riverside Downs in Henderson. These were great days for advocates of Quarter Horse racing in Kentucky, and it looked to observers of the breed, both within and without the Commonwealth, that the sport had gained a significant toehold in the state. The AQHA looked to Kentucky as an important state for advancement of the breed and the sport, since the totals were $12.5 million in handle, 140 days of racing, and nearly $2.2 million in purses.

However, the early 1990s in Kentucky horse racing were characterized by trouble related to politics and regulatory changes, as well as corruption and allegations of it. A political tug of war in Henderson over simulcasting between Riverside Downs and Ellis Park ended all Quarter Horse racing at the former facility after 1990. And a refusal by the HBPA to approve a proposed mixed meet of Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses at Bluegrass Downs halted pari-mutuel racing of Quarter Horses in Paducah after a brief two-week meet in 1992. After averaging roughly 400 races a year for two decades, the sport was without a home.

Unfortunately, the next decade saw the most dramatic legislative and economic changes in recent history as off-track betting, whole-card interstate simulcasting, plus account wagering on TVG and the Internet, were legalized and/or negotiated. With all of these changes, the Quarter Horse racing interests in this state were without a track, without funds, and without many friends. In 2002, the AQHA led an effort to reorganize local Quarter Horse racing interests to legalize the simulcasting of Quarter Horse races into Kentucky off-track wagering sites. Experts said a new law would be required to legalize such simulcasting, and that amendments would also be needed to existing statutes to re-authorize live racing. A bill was passed in 2003.

In the same legislative session, it was necessary to add another bill to allow the racing of horses conceived by artificial insemination. That bill was amended by the harness horsemen to require that simulcast money earned for purses at a licensed harness track be put into the harness purse account. So, while we had a law, we had no track and no way to accumulate purse money. Only a desire by The Red Mile to send harness signals to California – controlled at night by Los Alamitos – gave that track an incentive to take Quarter Horse simulcasts and run a brief meet of Quarter Horse races. The 2008 meet is the fifth consecutive Quarter Horse pari-mutuel meet in Kentucky, and all, if not profitable, have been popular and well attended.

KY’s Quarter Horse Racing Potential

By law, there have been three breeds of horses recognized and regulated as racing breeds under the regulation of the State’s pari-mutuel commission: Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds, and Quarter Horses. There is limited room or opportunity for Kentucky to grow as a Thoroughbred state. The issue in that breed, and in some other other parts of the horse industry in Kentucky, is preservation. After all, there are about 175 Thoroughbred stallions in North America that stand for a stud fee of over $10,000. Kentucky continually has about 90 percent.

It is hard to predict what the potential may be for expansion of Standardbred breeding but the breed has an unbroken history in this state, as much racing in Kentucky as demand appears to warrant (if not more), and a series of North American indices over the past 20 years that suggest that the industry and the sport may be declining somewhat nationally.

Outside of pari-mutuel racing, growth is impossible to predict since demand for the non-racing uses of horses are not driven by outside third parties, such as spectators or bettors, but by participants and exhibitors themselves. Racing has thrived during economic recessions. And as long as fans continue to wager, there will be a demand for a new crop of two-year-old racehorses every year (at some level). But economic downturns tend to diminish drastically such expensive leisure activities as horse showing. Breeding that relies on supplying pari-mutuel racetracks with product has a much longer and more secure time horizon than does breeding that relies on hobby uses, showing, trail riding, or the whims of breed fanciers.

One equine sport that has potential for significant growth in Kentucky – because it tends to combine a pari-mutuel, bettor-oriented market demand with national trends that are as positive as any other industry segment – is Quarter Horse racing. That it is compatible with an existing already strong base of non-racing Quarter Horses, and with an existing already strong base of Thoroughbred breeding and racing, are facts that only add to its potential. Add to this the fact that the national sport, led by the American Quarter Horse Association in Amarillo, is committed to a significant presence in this region of the nation, and there are many reasons to anticipate a positive and complementary growth in Kentucky.

The Kentucky Quarter Horse Association is committed to working with other groups of horsemen, other groups of Quarter Horse breeders, other sprint-racing breeds, and with potential racetrack investors in the quest for a vibrant Quarter racing future.