Summers reflects on narrow miss in Quarter Horse Triple Crown

The 1993 season at Ruidoso Downs is one of many fond memories for former jockey Nancy Summers, now a trainer at The Downs at Albuquerque.

That year, Summers, then 31, was the regular rider of Treacherously, who won the Ruidoso Futurity in May and the Rainbow Futurity in July only to miss a sweep of the Triple Crown with a third-place finish in the All American Futurity on Labor Day.

Nearly three decades later, Summers will watch with heightened interest Monday to see if Jess Savin Candy can win the $3 million All American and join Special Effort from 1981 as the only horses to sweep the southern New Mexico track’s famous Triple Crown series for 2-year-olds.

Summers is predicting a piece of history on Monday.

“I think it takes a lot of luck,” she said earlier this week. “I think he can do it.”

Jess Savin Candy won the $1 million Ruidoso Futurity at 350 yards on June 13 and the $1 million Rainbow Futurity at 400 yards on July 25. In the second day of time trials for the All American Futurity on Aug. 21, Jess Savin Candy set the day’s fastest time with a half-length win.

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Treacherously was the fastest qualifier for the 1993 All American when the trials had a slightly different format. That year, the horses with the 10 fastest times from 19 trials advanced to the $1.937 million final. In recent years, the five fastest qualifiers from two days of trials earn berths in the final. This year, there were 15 trials on each day.

Summers began exercising Treacherously on behalf of trainer Sam Sandoval in late winter of 1993.

“No one knew he was that special,” Summers said. “I worked him out of the gate and he blew away from there.”

Treacherously won his debut in a 330-yard maiden race at Albuquerque on St. Patrick’s Day, the first of eight consecutive wins that included the Sun Country Futurity at Sunland Park and the Ruidoso and Rainbow futurities as well as the trials for those races.

After an eighth straight win in the All American trials, Treacherously was 2-5 for the final. He bumped with a rival at the start and failed to keep pace in the final 100 yards, finishing 1 3/4 lengths behind the California invader A Classic Dash.

“There’s a lot of reasons he got beat,” Summers said. “He won eight in a row. He was getting a little tired.

“It wasn’t anything that hadn’t happened to a million horses. I think it was one race too many.”

Treacherously, who raced for Wayne Dallas, won seven more races in his career, including three stakes, before making his final start in 1997. Summers rode Treacherously in 31 of his 35 starts, but he was never as sharp as he was in 1993, largely because of gate issues.

“As a 2-year-old, he was a gazelle,” Summers said. “At 3 and 4, he got big and stout and heavy and he struggled getting out of there.”

Sandoval is now retired in Farmington, N.M., and has a few horses in training with Summers.

Summers won 1,200 races – 392 with Quarter Horses and 908 with Thoroughbreds – in a 32-year riding career that ended in November 2015. Her current 45-horse stable consists of Thoroughbreds, but she was active at a recent Quarter Horse yearling sale in Ruidoso.

“I’m actually going back into Quarter Horses,” she said. “The Quarter Horse races fill and they run for a lot of money.”

Summers will be busy at Albuquerque on Monday, unable to make the three-hour drive south to Ruidoso Downs. Still, Summers has a unique perspective of what Jess Savin Candy is attempting to accomplish.

“I’m excited for him,” she said. “It’s good for the sport. I’ll sure be watching.”