Track Magazine

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That Hudson Column by Ben Hudson, Track Magazine Owner/Publisher Just about everyone has a favorite season. Some like spring. Some prefer fall. Some winter. But for me...at least at this point in my life...my favorite season is summer. The races at Ruidoso. The yearling sales in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and California. The All American Futurity. Golf in Ruidoso. But this summer has been perhaps my toughest ever. We lost Preston Carter in June. Blane Schvaneveldt in July. And now Scoop Vessels in August. Back in May, if someone had asked me to name my 10 closest friends in the horse business, these guys would have been in that Top 10. Preston and Blane both had a recent history of medical issues, so their passing did not stun me like the loss of Scoop. When I received a call asking me about Scoop on the afternoon of the accident, I knew that it could not be true. I had talked with him a couple of days earlier. We were making plans to have dinner during the All American Futurity trials and talking about doing a brochure on First Down Dash and what we were going to do when the earnings of his runners hit $75 million here in a few months. On the day of the tragic crash, I had corresponded with Bonnie by e-mail a couple of times about various things...including getting Scoop on my weight loss program (weight was one of our most discussed topics for decades). And then all of a sudden this larger than life guy...this man who told me in 1993 that he would not sell First Down Dash for $10 million because he was going to syndicate him and that the horse would be the future of everything Vessels and the future of American Quarter Horse racing...was gone. Little did I know how right 41-year-old Scoop Vessels was that day early in the summer of 1993 when he told me how First Down Dash was the future of this business. Under Scoop ’s direction, First Down Dash would be syndicated and then dominate American Quarter Horse racing like no other horse had ever done before. And it is highly unlikely that American Quarter Horse racing...or any equine endeavor...ever again will see anything like First Down Dash. While the off-the-charts success of First Down Dash probably shocked everyone except perhaps Scoop, it was really the ascendancy of Frank (Scoop) Vessels III into a leadership role in this business of breeding and racing American Quarter Horses that stunned many. This was that happy-go-lucky Vessels kid that was seldom seen around Los Alamitos or Vessels Stallion Farm. And he certainly was not seen around a horse sale or a meeting of the Pacific Coast Quarter Horse Racing Association or the American Quarter Horse Association or the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association or the Jockey Club. But when First Down Dash began to take over the stats, the horse seemed to drag Scoop along with him. This grandson of Frank Sr. and Grace and the son of Frank Jr. and Millie turned from his off-road racing career and other diversions to the new breeding farm he had helped create in Northern San Diego county.

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