Ruidoso Downs and the All American Futurity
Near Ruidoso, New Mexico
Down in the valley, along the highway east of town, is the reason a lot of Texans and New Mexicans have known the name Ruidoso for generations. Ruidoso Downs is a horse-racing track, and the ponies have been running here every summer since nineteen forty-six. But this track earned its fame on a single afternoon each year.
On Labor Day, Ruidoso Downs runs the All American Futurity, a quarter-horse sprint of just four hundred forty yards, over in about twenty-one seconds, and long billed as the richest quarter-horse race in the world. It was first run in nineteen fifty-nine for a purse of one hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars, already enormous for the sport. Then in nineteen seventy-eight it became the first horse race of any breed, anywhere, to top one million dollars, and it kept climbing from there, reaching a purse of three million dollars, the richest race for a two-year-old of any breed in North America.
Owners pay in year after year to keep their young horses eligible, gambling on a burst of speed down one short, straight stretch of dirt. Blink at the wrong moment, and you will miss the whole thing.
