By Andrea Caudill

Q-RACING JOURNAL—MARCH 23, 2015—In the world of sprint racing, this win couldn’t have come any easier. Breaking straight and true under jockey Larry Payne, Politicaly Correct sailed over 350 yards of dirt to clinch a length victory over Grade 1 winner Gold Digging Ashley in the $268,000 Oklahoma Derby at Remington Park.

The gray gelding is by world champion and the 2014 leading freshman sire Apollitical Jess and out of the stakes-winning Tres Seis mare Senorita Tres.

Politicaly Correct was bred by Walter “Dick” Harrison of Battle Creek, Michigan, who owns him in partnership with his friend Jim Helzer, the AQHA Past President and member of the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame who also trained the horse. Mr. Helzer is very familiar with winning big races as an owner and breeder, but this is by far the biggest win of his training career.

Politicaly Correct represents the third generation of a great mare family cultivated by Harrison for decades.

Rancho El Cabresto Inc.’s Apollitical Jess’ storybook life continues, as he closed his first year at stud as the No. 1 freshman sire by a dominating margin, with more than $1.2 million in progeny earnings. (The next closest freshman was $1 million behind him.) You can read more about the son of Mr Jess Perry who stands at JEH Stallion Station - Oklahoma in my Pedigree Analysis on AJs High from last season.

Politicaly Correct got his steel gray coat from his dam. Accompanying this article is a portrait photograph of Senorita Tres that I took when she was 3 – the same age as her son is now – and it’s obvious to see where his looks come from.

Dick and Lois Harrison have been married for more than 60 years, and they got started in the horse industry initially through their sons’ 4-H interests, which grew into their own passion for racing. They are familiar faces at the track and board meetings, where Dick has been active in governance in both Michigan and nationally.

It was 33 years ago when Dick laid down $1,500 and picked up his first steel gray filly – a yearling by the name of Chics Two Rockets. The Lucks Chic Gay filly would change their lives, he told me. She won 20 of 29 starts and earned $55,795 while racing most of her career in Michigan and Ohio. She would win five stakes, set a track record and retire as a Superior Race Horse.

When she retired to the broodmare pasture, she first produced for them Liberty Jinks, a stakes-winning Liberty Jet Line gelding who earned $14,428 in his career. Her second was a filly by the same stallion named Precious Libby, who would also be a stakes winner and earner of $27,126. Chics Two Rockets' incredibly promising produce career was cut short after that, though, as in a tragic crime, while standing in her pasture, she was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting by a teenager.

Precious Libby was left to carry on her mother’s legacy, which she did in style. All 10 of her starters returned as winners, and astoundingly, all but one of those were either a stakes winner or stakes-placed runner – a stakes strike rate of 90 percent! Together her runners earned $357,978, lead by Senorita Tres ($140,730), Rosey Rules ($46,212), Rockin Dale ($44,797), Precious Debutante ($34,836) and Dashin Doda ($26,465).

Let’s put this mare’s accomplishments in perspective: Only 39 mares have ever produced five or more stakes winners. (The record of seven stakes winners is held jointly by Runaway Wave, Oh La Proud, Shirleys Strawfly, Trippy Dip (TB) and Deckella.) And Precious Libby is the only mare on that list whose own daughter is also on the list – Precious Debutante herself has produced six stakes winners from nine starters. And of those 39 mares, only nine made it onto the list with 10 or less starters, while the average foals per mare on the list is 15.7.

Precious Libby’s 90 percent strike rate of stakes winners/stakes runners puts her seventh on the list of stakes dams by percentages. There are six mares with 100 percent strike rates for producing stakes winners or stakes-placed runners, but none of those six have produced more than five starters (the mares include Cookie Croton, Yankee Doll (TB), Roan Janice, A Streak Ahead, Jet’s Fair Lady and Miss Prevel (TB)).

Senorita Tres was foaled in 2005, and won 18 of 26 career starts, including 11 stakes, with her biggest wins coming in the 2008 Bradford Stakes (G3) and 2007 All American Congress Futurity (G3). Politicaly Correct is her third foal. She is also the dam of stakes-placed runner Brookestone Grey (by Brookstone Bay, $29,748). She has a yearling full brother to Politicaly Correct named Senator Jess.

The other daughters of Precious Libby are also producers, lead by Precious Debutante, whom as I mentioned has produced six stakes winners and one stakes-placed runner from nine starters, with progeny earnings of $739,420. Amongst the runners produced by Precious Libby’s daughters are stakes winners Fearles Fred ($269,424), Ida Snow Man ($163,879), Fast Man Vic ($73,245), Casey Corona ($51,688), Mr Corona To You ($35,826), Seiswho ($26,517) and Jetsetting Moma ($14,256); and Grade 1-placed Don Juan Bryan SA ($114,743).

So this weekend’s big win is just another historical step for Harrison’s history-making family. “The one thing I figured is if they didn’t look good, I didn’t want them,” Harrison told me of his breeding philosophy in a 2008 interview for The American Quarter Horse Racing Journal. “I want a good-looking halter horse. I like to see conformation, and not the old tanky-body type, which is what most of mine are – because I started with Precious Libby and that Liberty Jet Line/Easy Jet line. I’ve tried to breed to something more stretchy, with more Thoroughbred in them.

“Back (when we started), some of the racehorses were crooked and not so pretty,” he added. “I think that’s one reason why we’ve got more done, because my horses were pretty doggone correct. And we raised them all – we never buy them. And that makes it more fun.”

So here’s to a correct horse from a correct family – and 40 years of fun.

AQHA News and information is a service of the American Quarter Horse Association. For more news and information, follow @AQHARacing on Twitter, watch the AQHA Racing Newscast and visit www.aqharacing.com.