Racehorse owner and breeder Clarence Scharbauer Jr., 82, Midland, TX, was among four luminaries inducted into the Racehorse Hall of Fame at Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico, on Saturday, June 23. World champion trainer Charles “Bubba” Cascio, G1 stakes winning jockey and trainer Danny Cardoza, and AQHA world champion Vandy’s Flash joined Scharbauer (pictured) as 2007 inductees.
A past president of the American Quarter Horse Association and member of the AQHA Hall of Fame, Scharbauer, raced five Quarter Horse champions, including Double Bid, Double Queen and Vim And Vigor, who was ridden by Danny Cardoza. In 1987, Alysheba, under the ownership of Scharbauer’s wife Dorothy and daughter Pam, won the 1987 Kentucky Derby and was named 1988 Horse of the Year, after claiming four Grade 1 stakes, highlighted by the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
In 1991, the Scharbauers built Valor Farm, near Pilot Point, Texas, home to some of the Southwest’s most prominent Thoroughbred stallions. Dorothy Scharbauer, whose father, Fred Turner, Jr., raced 1959 Kentucky Derby winner Tomy Lee, passed away in 2002.
Bubba Cascio, 75, trained six AQHA champions, including two-time world champion Dash For Cash. Dash For Cash’s winning time of :21.17 for 440 yards in the 1976 Champion of Champions still stands as the track record at Los Alamitos Race Course in Southern California. Cascio also conditioned 1983 world champion Dashingly, who remains the all-time leading money-earning female Quarter Horse, with earnings of $1.7 million.
Cascio won the 1968 All American Futurity with Three Oh’s; the 1970 All American Futurity with Dash For Cash’s sire Rocket Wrangler; and the first running of the All American Derby, in 1974, with Pass Over. In 2006, Cascio, who lives near Granbury, TX, saddled Thoroughbred Breeders’ Cup sprint contender Gold Storm.
Danny Cardoza, of Pacines, CA, is the only person who has ridden the winner of a $1 million race and trained the winner of a $1 million race. Cardoza won the $1 million All American Futurity in 1979 aboard Pie In The Sky.
From the time that AQHA began compiling race statistics in 1970, until he retired as a jockey in 1993, Cardoza rode 3,212 winners with earnings of nearly $25 million. His numerous important wins include the All American Derby aboard world champion Dashs Dream; the Kindergarten Futurity on world champion First Down Dash; the Champion of Champions with world champion Gold Coast Express; and the Golden State Futurity on world champion Dashingly.
Vandy’s Flash’s career spanned the late 1950s into the mid-1960s. He set the Los Alamitos’ 440-yard track record of :21.7, while winning the 1960 Los Alamitos Championship, but is probably best known for setting the Los Alamitos 350-yard track record of :17.5 that stood for 18 years. The 1954 gelded son of Vandy, out of Miss Pawhuska, started 106 times, during eight seasons, with 28 (8 in stakes) wins, 15 (seven in stakes) seconds, and 11 (nine in stakes) thirds.