Female Legends of the Racetrack: A Champion Filly, Mare, and Quarter Horse Trainer

The stage was set for her crowning achievement—as improbable as it seemed.

Just 1,320 yards—and seven other talented competitors—stood between her and the all-time North American Thoroughbred record.

Was this amazingly-consistent equine superstar capable of yet another consecutive victory? In a sport with more peaks and valleys than Switzerland, could she maintain her perfect record and rewrite the history books? Or would she finally prove herself to be, well…mortal?

As they turned for home, the indomitable five-year-old bay mare could have thrown in the saddlecloth. The leader´s smokin´ fractions put Peppers Pride behind the eight ball.

Perhaps the Happy Pastures Retirement Ranch didn´t sound so bad after all. After all, what else did her highness have to prove? Almost a millionaire, she could afford whatever tickled her horse fancy. And who´d snicker at an 18-1 record?

In mid-stretch jockey Carlos Madeira, her regular rider, pressed the accelerator. "Now or never, princess. Show me what you´ve got today."

Like a heat-seeking missile, Pepper locked onto her target, shot forward, and destroyed the opposition--by a whopping five-and-three-quarters lengths.

Her powerful victory—just her 19th in a row, for heaven´s sake!—in the $125,000 New Mexico State Racing Commission Handicap reminded me of another female equine superstar who set the Quarter Horse racing world on fire in 1996: the legendary Dashing Folly.

When the three-year-old sorrel filly out of all-time leading sire First Down Dash arrived at Los Alamitos Race Course in Donna McArthur´s barn, no one knew much about the Manor Downs invader.

But they quickly discovered that these two females—along with jockey Tami Purcell—meant business. Big time.

Dashing Folly mowed down the opposition in The Town Policy Handicap, her first conquest. Then she won the Vandy´s Flash Handicap. Next she embarrassed her elders in the Mildred Vessels Memorial Handicap. In the Los Alamitos Derby, she set a then-record time. Finally she humiliated the boys in the season-ending Champion of Champions.

When the smoke cleared, she´d accumulated twelve straight victories. Not victories against patsies, either—she beat tough open company, older horses, and males at the world´s premier Quarter Horse racing facility. A perfect 1996 season. Retiring with more than half-a-million bucks in the bank and a high speed index of 108, Dashing Folly garnered AQHA World Champion honors. Not once, but twice.

It takes a special trainer to manage the career of a special racehorse, and McArthur´s stellar record in the Quarter Horse racing industry speaks for itself. Having won more than 40 stakes races just at Los Alamitos Race Course, her resume reads like a Who´s Who of top horsemen in Quarter Horse racing.

Not only did she help reverse Dashing Folly´s racing fortunes after the filly´s uninspiring maiden season, but the knowledgeable New Mexico-born horseman managed to coax one winning performance after another out of the talented sprinter—not an easy task since racehorses are constantly plagued by illnesses, injuries, mental problems, and inconsistent performances.

Dashing Folly was the first World Champion to be trained by a woman.

Indeed, McArthur´s extraordinary accomplishments are all the more remarkable because she competes in a tough, male-dominated industry with an unwritten code of frontier machismo. She raised the bar for all women in horse racing.

The first major blow McArthur struck for women trainers occurred when she knocked legendary trainer Blane Schvaneveldt off his throne by being named 1997 AQHA Champion Trainer—the first and only woman ever to scale such lofty heights.

All McArthur did that incredible year was win the $1.8 million All-American Futurity—the most prestigious race in Quarter Horse racing—the Los Alamitos Million, the Ed Burke Memorial Futurity, and the Governor´s Cup Futurity. Her horses banked more than $2.1 million in 1997 alone.

During her youth, McArthur barrel raced, roped steers, and showed horses. Growing up on her parents´ farm in New Mexico, she probably never dreamed she´d become a top horseman in the Quarter Horse racing world.