Dual Rey

Dual Rey was a classic American Quarter Horse. The sorrel stallion could do it all, with class, cow sense, speed, athleticism, and the prepotency to spread it around.

Bred and owned by Linda Holmes of Holmes Cutting/Performance Horses in Longmont, Colorado, Dual Rey was foaled in 1994 by the Peppy San Badger stallion Dual Pep and out of the Wyoming Doc mare Nurse Rey, a half-sister to Rey Lynx and Smartolena.

Dual Rey first made his name as a top-flight cutting horse. Debuting in the 1997 NCHA Futurity, Lloyd Cox rode him to a tie for sixth in the open finals. Dual Rey earned $105,038 in the show pen.

“Dual Rey wasn’t a very big horse, about 14-2 hands,” says Linda. “He had a deep heart girth. Dual Rey was really quick, he really wanted to be low-headed, have that freedom of head and neck when he came through turns. He wasn’t a mechanical horse. He really wanted to do it naturally. He was very sound… and we never shod him. He went barefoot. He had great feet. The other amazing thing about him is how smart he was. What was tough about that was trying to keep up with him – he was smarter than most people.”

However, it was in the breeding shed that Dual Rey really made his mark. The No. 2 leading cutting sire and a leading maternal grandsire in the NCHA, Dual Rey sired offspring with earnings of more than $40 million through AQHA, NCHA, NRCHA, and NRHA. Dual Rey sired 16 AQHA world champions and 18 AQHA reserve world champions.

His highest-earning offspring with earnings of more than $400,000 each are Special Nu Baby, Dont Stopp Believin, Reys Desire, and Rey Down Sally.

Dual Rey stood at Oswood Stallion Station in Weatherford, Texas the last decade of his breeding career.

“He lived life on his own terms, so you just worked around his stuff and he was like that ’til the end,” says Jeff Oswood.

The stallion returned to Colorado for his final six months, before being euthanized in May 2018 due to complications of age.

“It was fun to have him home again,” Linda says. “Dual Rey was like a child to me. We raised him, we raised his mother, we had his mother’s sire, so they were like family. When I was blessed enough to have him come back home for that last six months of his life, it just lit up the farm.”

Dual Rey was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2020.

Biography updated as of August 2021.