Faces at Ruidoso

The Village of Ruidoso welcomed some of Quarter Horse Racing’s most avid fans the weekend of August 21-23, 2015.  Families of up to four and five generations met at Ruidoso Downs Racetrack as spectators and participants in the qualifying heats for the richest races of the summer.

The connections of 326 All American Futurity hopefuls and 116 All American Derby entrants filed into Ruidoso Downs, each one aspiring to return in two weeks on Labor Day Weekend, to enter the winner’s circle and to collect his All American trophy.  Everyone checked the hourly weather forecast and calculated how long they would have to wait, watching for signs of thunderclouds, hoping the rain would hold off until their horse finished its qualifying trial.  Wind speed and direction became the focus of the crowd as the raindrops held off in most of the trial races of the weekend.  By Saturday night, Friday’s five fastest qualifiers and Saturday’s five fastest could be found on stallionEsearch’s list of the 2015 $3,000,000 All American Futurity Qualifiers.

By one p.m. on Sunday, the early morning downpour had been successfully addressed at the racetrack, and trials began to produce the ten fastest three-year-old All American Derby Qualifiers.  All American Futurity veterans, Champions, millionaires, and prior Graded Stakes winners lined up at the starting gates 12 times, and at the end of the day, the ten fastest were declared worthy to vie for the final race’s $2,300,000.