SATURDAY, JULY 27, 2024

(Ruidoso Downs, NM) Ruidoso Downs Race Track has announced that the annual Hall of Fame Banquet has been rescheduled for Thursday evening, August 15, 2024 at 6:30 p.m.

The original date had been postponed due to the track moving operations to the Downs of Albuquerque this season. The banquet will be held in the Turf Club at Ruidoso Downs prior to the New Mexico-bred Horse Sale that starts Friday, August 16.

    The inductees to be honored include:

• Horse: Danjer

• Owner/Breeder: MJ Farms

• Trainer: Mike Joiner

• Jockey: Chris Zamora

• Special Achievement: Billy G. Smith

• Racing Official: Tom Dawson

Tickets for the event are available at www.raceruidoso.com/entertainment.

The Ruidoso Downs Hall of Fame regularly honors people and animals that have made major impacts in the horse racing industry both nationwide and at Ruidoso Downs through the years.

Danjer:
A winner of 12 Grade-1 stakes events, Danjer won 22 career races and was the 2021 AQHA World Champion, plus 2020 and 2021 AQHA Champion Aged Horse and Aged Gelding.

Danjer, sired by FDD Dynasty out of the mare Shez Jess Toxic by Take Off Jess, and is currently third on a list of all-time leading money earnings with $2,499,432. Danjer died suddenly last summer of an aneurysm while in training for the All American Gold Cup for co-owner/trainer/breeder Dean Frey, Pat Guthrie of Downtime Enterprises, and Billy G. Smith.

MJ Farms:
Owned by Mac Murray and Dr. Janis Murray, the Albuquerque-based breeding farm is home to top-ranked New Mexico-bred sires Big Daddy Cartel and Eye Am King. The stallion farm has also owned or managed such major sires as Dash Ta Fame, Jesse James Jr and Woodbridge.

Major stakes winners from the MJ Farms breeding program include Astica, Alice K White, Big Daddy, Mister Riptide, Della De Ball, Wild Six and Kendall Jackson. MJ Farms has continually been a top producer of yearlings at the New Mexico and Ruidoso Select Sale for many years.

Mike Joiner:
The winning trainer of the 2023 $3 million All American Futurity with Cowboys Gun Z, trainer Mike Joiner has career earnings of over $30 million.

Joiner has been training horses at Ruidoso Downs since the 1970s having won every major stakes event at least once through the years. Top horses that have hailed from the Joiner barn include Flash and Roll, Bodadcious Eagle, FDD Dynasty, First Valiant Sign among many other champions and stakes winners.

Chris Zamora:
Considered one of the top New Mexico-based jockeys for more than 20 years, Chris Zamora logged more than 2,000 wins in a riding career that stretched from the late 1980s to 2011.

Zamora won 12 riding titles during his riding career at Albuquerque Downs, Ruidoso Downs and Santa Fe Downs. He was the nation’s leading quarter horse rider in money earned in 1994, and has career quarter horse earnings of $11.4 million. Some of his top mounts included quarter horses such as Noblesse Six, Blazin N Shakin, Namehimastreaker, Rabbit Revival, Kama Shootin and Chicks Are Streakin.

Zamora also notched 1,027 thoroughbred victories during his career with earnings of $6 million.

Billy G. Smith:
The current New Mexico Racing Chairman has been involved in the state’s racing industry as an owner and breeder since the late 1970s. Smith has also served on AQHA committees in several different capacities.

Smith is best-known for his involvement in Danjer and leading sire FDD Dynasty. Other major stakes winners owned by Smith include Kates Dynasty, Terrific Synergy and Breakin Rules. Smith continues to manage the FDD Dynasty Syndicate that has seen the stallion’s progeny earn more than $36 million.

Tom Dawson:
A broadcasting host for 50 years, Dawson has been the primary voice of quarter horse racing’s major televised racing events since the 1970s.

Dawson’s career started as racing secretary at Ruidoso Downs, Sunland Park and Albuquerque Downs in the early 1970s.  He appeared as an analyst during the first live broadcast of the All American Futurity in 1974, and has appeared on various horse racing broadcasts on ESPN, NBC, Fox Sports, RIDE TV and the Cowboy Channel.

Dawson continues to be the host of the Cowboy Channel’s coverage of triple crown racing at Ruidoso Downs, Ruidoso Downs’s Triple Crown Report, as well as top quarter horse industry races at Remington Park, Lone Star Park and Albuquerque Downs.

(Ben Hudson, owner of Track Magazine, provided some of the information  in this press release.)