Ranching

BORN TO RUN

RAISING THOROUGHBREDS TAKES CARE AND A LOT OF GRIT ON A BRISK MORNING in early fall, a blue heron stands silently beside a horseshoe-shaped pond. A nearby hillside is cloaked in a brilliant mantle of yellow tallow weed. A red-tailed hawk makes lazy circles. A breeze stirs. At 4,462 feet above sea level, the air is pristine; the sky is azure, and the sun is warm. Another perfect day at Arizona Highlands. And well it should be, for today is a special day in the life of Arizona Amber. A rite-of-passage day. This morning she will begin the long journey to . . . to where? Turf Paradise? Santa Anita? The Kentucky Derby?

Amber knows nothing of Turf Paradise or Santa Anita or Churchill Downs. As yet this young horse knows nothing of paddocks or starting gates or roaring crowds or dirt being kicked in her face. Amber certainly does not know that she carries the genes of Bold Ruler in her body, that she is a great-granddaughter of one of the most potent stallions in thoroughbred history. Amber knows only that at this moment she is being brushed, and a halter is being slipped over her face. Amber is about to be led to the round pen. Today, in the rarefied air of Peeples Valley, at the newest, finest thoroughbred training facility in Arizona, while the hawk circles above, and the hillside blazes a yellow backdrop, Amber will be broken to a saddle. Her first step in the odyssey to . . . well, Churchill Downs?

BORN TO RUN

Forget the Old West stereotype of the bronco-bustin' cowboy riding the wildly bucking horse. When Bret Hone speaks of breaking yearlings, he uses words like love and trust. He speaks of "letting the horse make her own decisions" and of the importance of "no surprises."

Hone is the on-site and very much hands-on manager of Arizona Highlands. He broke his first horse when he was 13 years old. Across the ensuing 15 years, he has broken some 500 more.

He leads Amber into the round pen just before 10 o'clock. The round pen is an isolation corral which is 30 feet in diameter, has a sand-and-sawdust floor, and 10-foot sides. Inside, it's just Amber and Hone. No distractions. As one Arizona horseman put it, "She's got to like him; he's all she has."

Hone turns Amber loose and stands in the center of the pen. The filly jogs around the perimeter several times then stops and faces him. He goes to the horse, pets her, makes a big deal out of loving her up.

"When the horse is in school," he says, "I'm the teacher, and I want her complete attention. I want her facing me; I can't put a bridle or a halter on that other end."

Each time Amber stops, Hone pets her and talks to her. Then he leans across Amber's back, putting the weight of his body on her.

Amber is calm through all of this. Attentive. Hone slips on a saddle towel, then a saddle pad, finally the saddle itself, cinched loosely; then he encourages the dark-bay filly to lope around the pen. "I want her to feel she still has her freedom," he explains.

Then he lies across the horse's back, legs dangling on one side, hands patting the other. "I'm just letting her think aboutit," he says. Amber's lips twitch. The horse exhales with a great whooshing sound and relaxes. It's okay.

it," he says. Amber's lips twitch. The horse exhales with a great whooshing sound and relaxes. It's okay.

At 10:25 Hone is seated on Amber's back. By 10:30 the horse is turning her head in response to his gentle manipulation of the reins. And his light kicks have her walking around the pen.

End of the first lesson. Amber hasn't bucked or reared or kicked. Hone calls it "a relationship based on love."

In 150 days Amber will be ready to race.

Seventy miles southeast of Arizona Highlands, the best stallion that ever stood in Arizona is buried in a pastoral setting in the middle of a city carved out of a desert.

"Crafty Drone made this place," Ann Owens is quick to tell you. And other horse people are equally quick to admit, "When Crafty Drone died, it was a blow to the racing industry throughout this state."

The place Crafty Drone made is called Triple AAA Ranch, based in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix. The ranch is owned by Richard and Ann Owens, by acclamation the leading breeders/racers of thoroughbreds in Arizona.

In each of the years spanning 1984 through 1990, the Owenses were named the top breeders in the state by the Arizona Thoroughbred Breeders Association (ATBA). During that period, horses running under the orange-androyal purple silks of Triple AAA won approximately $3.5 million at tracks throughout Arizona, the Midwest, and Southern California.

A tour of the couple's Glendale home nestled in the middle of their 65-acre ranch could just as easily be a stroll through the Hall of Fame of the Arizona thoroughbred industry. Before you are everywhere are the trophies and plaques, the cups and photos, the accolades and testimonials that lend credence to a statement made by the two-time president of the ATBA, Frank Covello: "The Owenses have moved horse racing into the 20th century in Arizona."

Which means they've come a long way. Richard and Ann are Phoenix natives. They were high-school sweethearts. Both were raised on farms, although Ann's family never owned a horse. "I knew tractors and sugar beets," she'll tell you, "but not horses."

They started in thoroughbreds as people who knew racing from the point of view of the two-dollar window. "We began going to the races," Ann explains, "and, like anyone else, we got the bug to own a horse. So we got ourselves a cheap mare. Eventually she broke down and couldn't race. So we bred her. It went from there. We had winners out of our first few mares. They weren't very high caliber, but they were winners."

For the first few years, their breeding/racing enterprise was strictly a mom-and-pop operation. They owned a modest 10-acre spread in northwest Phoenix. Richard was in the construction business and a partner in a lumber and building-materials company.

Ann stayed home and took care of the horses, but there was much too much for her to do alone. When Richard came home in the evening, he pitched in: cleaning stalls, trimming hooves, treating bucked shins. During foaling season, they both slept in the barn.

"Eventually that got old," Richard says, and, in the late '70s, they hired a manager. Today, with two ranches totaling 122 acres, they have five employees.

Indeed, much of the success of the Triple AAA Ranch did spring from the loins of Crafty Drone, a stallion representing the best of times and the worst of times for Richard and Ann.

Ask any horseman in the state, "Which is the best stallion that ever stood in Arizona?" And you always get the same answer: "Oh, no question about that, Crafty Drone."

Richard bought the horse from Harold Florsheim (as in the shoes) in 1978. Crafty Drone was fresh from his own distinguished career as a colt that could win on any surface. But Florsheim was strictly into racing, not breeding, and, as a good business deal, the Owenses' purchase of Crafty Drone for stud purposes ranks only a nose behind the steal of Manhattan from the Indians.

"His first crop produced four foals," Richard recalls. "Two were stakes winners. The next year, we had five out of him, and two of those were stakes winners. So I bought a few more mares and started breeding everything I had to him."

With impressive results. "Everything he threw ran," Ann says, "and they looked the part. And he dominated. He had the