Hall Looks Back on Early Days With a Smile
Connie Hall remembers what she calls the cowboy days at Los Alamitos Race Course when she was a struggling trainer.
“It was a house rule that no women or dogs were allowed on the property after sundown,” she said.
Hall, off to a great start this season, can laugh about things like that now, but it wasn’t so funny 25 years ago when she was a single mother raising two children and scraping out a living. This season, she has 10 quarter horse victories, fifth overall, first among women trainers.
Hall, who lives in Anaheim, certainly can be considered one of the pioneers among female trainers.
And she did it the hard way, rising before sunup, going to the track to train what few horses she could get, getting her son and daughter off to school, then returning to finish her horse business before sundown. Because women weren’t allowed on the premises after dark, she was not allowed to sleep in the barn area, which some male counterparts did, or be there when her horses returned from racing.
Trainer Bruce Hawkinson said that when he arrived at the track in the early 1960s, the men who ran the barn area and made day-to-day decisions about how the track was run, scoffed at the handful of women who wanted to become trainers. It just wasn’t considered proper in those days for women to be in the barn after dark and it wasn’t until the late 1970s that things started to change, he said.
“It was lots tougher for women back then,” Hawkinson said. “Back then, women couldn’t be here after dark. There were a lot of rules about women.”
Hall, 52, has spent most of her life around horses at nearby stables and at the track. She graduated from Lakewood Mayfair High and has lived in Orange County most of her adult life. She started training horses officially in 1972.
Today, the number of female trainers remains small, depending on the time of the season, but high-profile trainers such as Donna McArthur, who groomed the 1996 horse of the year, Dashing Folly, are making their marks. This year as many as 30 women trainers are expected at the track.
“As a small child I was horse crazy,” Hall said. “Then I got into race horses and I liked it. The idea that they would run for money and if they win you got a prize was exciting.”
It wasn’t easy in the early years, Hall said, but in the late 1970s, after the birth of her second child, she took a year off to reassess her career and changed the way she ran her barn.
“I realized I had to be the cause of what happened,” she said. “So, I went to horse sales and became more aggressive in meeting people.”
In 1986 she persuaded the owners of a stallion that she liked to let her take over. Beduino has gone on to become the fifth-ranked sire of money earners of all time, according to the Quarter Racing Journal.
At the current meet, Hall has several outstanding 2 year olds, including the gelding Outlaw Dasher, which finished second in the recent $221,000 Kindergarten Futurity and earned $37,586 for Hall’s barn. The dam of Outlaw Dasher was Antheria, which was fathered by Beduino. Another 2-year-old gelding, Peyote Chick, a third-generation descendant of Beduino, wound up fourth in that race.
Yuubachan, a 3-year-old gelding, posted one of the fastest times for today’s $75,000 California Sires Cup Derby and Sheeza Lil Val, a 2-year-old filly, has looked good, too.
“We’ve been bouncing along here pretty good,” Hall said. “Our horses have all been ready to run. We just make them go.”
*
Now 8 years old, champion quarter horse I.B. Quick might be brought out of retirement, according to trainer Jose Flores. If that occurs, it won’t be until the fall and there is speculation that I.B. Quick will make his return at the Los Angeles County Fair, where he won the Grade 3 Pomona Championship Handicap in 1996. Flores also trained Sneaky Fast, a 60-1 longshot that won the Kindergarten Futurity.
Notes
Jockey Jose Silva broke a wrist June 2 when his mount stumbled. Silva is out three to four weeks. In the same race, the saddle on King Stafford came loose, throwing jockey Victor Escobar to the ground. He suffered bruised ribs and is listed as day to day. . . . Blushing By will skip trials to the June 13 Vessels Maturity, according to owner James Markum. . . .Donna McArthur’s Champagne Lane has won six of seven starts and has earned $137,410 after taking the Town Policy Handicap two weeks ago.
