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JACKSON DUDLEY left and BONNIE HEATH Owners of Needles pi s + e m BT T T x Dudley ttedth Sbutid Bulfhessifieh Comparative New Sportsmen Apply Oil Principles to Racing Owners of Needles Mostly Credit Fontaine to Interest In Competition and Breeding CHURCHILL DOWNS Louisville Ky May 4 Comparative newcomers to racing B M Bonnie Heath and J C Jack Dudley coowners of the D H Stable in whose colors Needles will go to the post this afternoon nevertheless have an ap ¬ proach to the sport as sound or sounder than many many sportsmen of more ex ¬ tensive experience experienceSays Says Heath the younger and more artic ¬ ulate of the two We think Jack and I that racing is pretty much like our oil business By that I mean you have to have luck and friends if youre in oil or on the race track and you have to have patience and a willingness to work Weve only been in the sport about four years but we already know what a tough com ¬ petitive proposition it as asTremendous Tremendous Lift From Needles NeedlesUntil Until Hugh Fontaine developed Needles we had nothing but a few bad horses that were hardly worth feeding Of course Needles gave us a tremendous lift but we were prepared to go along even if we hadnlt found ourselves with such a good colt because weve always liked racing as spectators and when we got into it our selves we found that it was a world we wanted to belong to toIncidentally Incidentally at least 90 per cent of our interest in owning and breeding is due to Fontaine our trainer We went to Belmont Park with Hughie a few years ago when he was as down then as he could be wtih nothing but cheap horses including a couple of ours But when we went into the paddock with him it seemed like everyone there including the top brass like Marshall Cassidy arid all the bid trainers owners and jockeys went out of their way to make Hugh know how happy they were to see him It was a warming experience experienceDudley Dudley and Heath basically simple but j highly intelligent and friendly young men are in their early forties fortiesDudley Dudley grew up on ranches in Texas and was always around horses He played a little polo for a team representing an oil company for which he worked but never rode in rodeos as erroneously reported in several quarters quartersHeath Heath is a graduate of Oklahoma A M majored in geology The two have been partners since 1945 1945went went into drilling and rigging and other businesses on their own and by hard work and luck have done very well for themselves Dudley still spends nine months of the year in the Oklahoma oil fields and Heath frequently visits there although their widespread enterprises keep the latter trav ¬ eling a good bit of the time timeTheir Their interest in thoroughbred racing isnt limited merely to the track either They now have 600 acres of limestone shelf land five miles southwest of Ocala Fla where Needles was foaled and soon will increase this to 800 acres As yet there isnt a horse bam on the place where Needles eventually will stand at stud and Dudley and Heath have only four mares none of them on the farm But that is the way they want it because now Fontaine can start building from scratch incorporating ideas formulated in the years when he was manager for the late W H Coes Shoshone Farm and then for Mrs Dodge Sloane SloaneElmo Elmo Shropshire who managed W E Leachs Dickey Farm where Needles was foaled will be their farm manager managerDudley Dudley and Heath dont have a large string at the races with Fontaine but they constantly are seeking to improve their stock and were able to pick up a few prom ¬ ising horses on a recent trip to Ireland They are sensible young men going about this business in a conservative but thought ¬ ful manner and are thoroughly enjoying themselves in so doing They also are the kind of men Tvho will help racing because of their sound approval and are well deserving of the good fortune that sent Needles their way
