To: Don S.Boller who wrote (202 ) 10/13/1998 8:30:00 PM From: Charger Respond to
More Hubbard stories: The man CAN be a lot of fun and I like his wife a lot but it does seem like he has a control factor going on. He was determined to make our Governor Johnson give him gaming here in NM and the "fight" was so mishandled, some thought, that it ensured the bill did not get passed, much to our amazement. Crippled the racing industry here in this state. Hubbard threatened to abandon the racetrack (which is at my back door almost) as a leveraged ploy and the major economy of the area was threatened. It took two more years to calm everything down enough to get the bill passed. Meanwhile several farms went under, sales prices of the best Quarter Horses in the nation dropped to zilch. Your description of Hubbard is one I have heard a lot!! We think that a lot of the so-called losses of the track actually are created from the expenditures of his not-for-profit Museum right next door, but that could be all hearsay with not a bit of truth. Hubbard has been determined to win the All American forever. One year he ran a horse named Rodeo in the trials and oddly enough during his trial heat the timer broke and the hand timers claimed that Rodeo clocked sufficient time. Maybe. When the gaming bill finally got passed we understood that construction on the gaming room addition to the jockey club grandstand was to begin this summer. But it seems (Hubbard is a lessee of the land on which the track sits) that the land owner wants a very healthy cut off of the gaming (who knows the truth) and so the two minds never met, the addition did not get built and the energy and money has been siphoned off somewhere, I see no evidence of it yet, but then what do I know. I understand that Hubbard's horse partner, Dr. Ed Allred, wanted to buy the First Down Dash colt that I bought (luckily I had him tied up early). That was flattering. I took the colt to a trainer who I thought was the best at the time, John Basset, who came within a whisker of winning the All American the year before, but it seemed that Hubbard had brought him some horses and it became clear that I would get short shrift so I chose another trainer. Long and funny story with colt mysteriously getting put in Basset truck anyway to be shipped to Arizona and me claiming theft and chasing Basset through racetrack barns and parking lot 80 mph while he sped after the leaving truck - I wanted to make sure the colt didnt "slip" on his way off the truck. Such paranoia.
