Earning $609,533 in three seasons at the track, Dashing Phoebe compiled an impressive race record while becoming the champion 2-year-old filly and champion 3-year-old filly of her class.
Dashing Phoebe had it all. A champion racehorse who became a top-flight broodmare, the sorrel mare by Dash For Cash passed her blue blood and tremendous talent to a legion of champions and stakes winners.
Trained by Don Farris and ridden by Jerry Nicodemus, Dashing Phoebe broke her maiden on her second trip to post, winning the 1985 Sun Country Futurity (G1) at Sunland Park to set off a five-race win streak that included the Kansas Futurity (G1) at Ruidoso Downs. Dashing Phoebe’s connections sent her to C.W. “Bubba” Cascio for her sophomore season. Cascio sent out Nicodemus on her to win the Kansas Derby (G1). She next won her trial to the Rainbow Derby (G1), but broke poorly and finished fifth in the final. She then was second by a nose and failed to qualify in her trial to the All American Derby (G1), and Cascio hung up her tack.
“She was a runner, she sure was,” says Nicodemus. “She had her own personality – she was real hyper and she sure didn’t like loud noises. She could jump right out from under you when you were galloping her, but she was always right there. She was a top racehorse and when they started breeding her, she was just outstanding. When people get in the horse business, she was what they want to look for. She was really good for racing.”
Foaled in 1983, Dashing Phoebe was one of three stakes winners out of the stakes-winning Lady Bug’s Moon mare Phoebe’s Moon Bug. Dashing Phoebe was the first of two racing champions bred and raced by the Bass family’s San Jose Cattle Co. of Rockport, Texas, which also bred major winners such as Meganette.
The dam of five stakes winners and 10 other winners, Dashing Phoebe produced the earners of $2,371,102 from 18 starters. “She was everything to us,” says Kirk Goodfellow of Nacogdoches, Texas, who acquired Dashing Phoebe in 1999. “She was as pretty a horse as God ever put on the face of the earth. She was big, gorgeous and just everything a Quarter Horse should be and everything a broodmare should be. She was just pretty special.”
Dashing Phoebe was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2017.
Biography updated as of March 2017.