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The Land of Enchantment - an introduction to New Mexico

By Larry Bortstein
First Published: 16 July 2009 - Issue Number: 13

A trailer hauling a horse from Sunland Park in New Mexico rolled into Kentucky one day this past spring.
If you think you’ve heard this story before, you have. But this wasn’t the gelding Mine That Bird, whose trek from trainer Chip Woolley’s base in New Mexico to the winner’s circle at Churchill Downs after the Kentucky Derby made national headlines.
A few weeks before Mine That Bird staged his improbable 50-1 upset in the Run for the Roses, Joel Marr, another New Mexico trainer, drove all the way to Richland Hills Farm near Midway, Kentucky, with precious equine cargo of his own.
She was Peppers Pride, who won all 19 of her starts in a four-year racing career to set a modern-day national record. Marr was delivering the six-year-old New Mexico-bred mare to Kentucky for a date with Tiznow, the two-time Breeders’ Cup Classic champion who has become one of the most prized stallions in the country, standing at WinStar Farm.
A few days before Mine That Bird won America’s most famous race, Peppers Pride was declared in foal to Tiznow.
The exploits of Peppers Pride and Mine That Bird have created upheavals in the way in which horseracing is viewed in New Mexico.
Generally regarded for years as something of a backwater on the national racing landscape, the mare and the gelding jointly have shown that the state is the home of talented horsemen and horses.
And vanning horses long distances is all in a day’s – or week’s – work.
“In New Mexico, it’s not uncommon to drive your horses all over the state for the different meets,” Marr said. “We also do a lot of our own shoeing, whatever it takes to get everything accomplished.”
Woolley still shakes his head at the way he and his horse were treated during the buildup to the 135th Kentucky Derby.
“Most of the press people who came up and talked to me did it because they had heard I vanned the horse from New Mexico,” Woolley recalled.
“Some of them weren’t really even sure where New Mexico was. And, of course, I was the only guy on the backstretch walking on crutches because I’d broken my right leg when I fell off a motorcycle. Nobody was there to talk about the horse himself. After the Derby, they figured out who he was and I was.”
It is no longer possible to ignore racing in “The Land of Enchantment,” as New Mexico calls itself.
For the past decade, it could be called “The Land of Enhancement” as far as its racing industry is concerned at its five tracks.
Since the advent of slot machines in 1999, daily purse dis...

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