Rocket Wrangler as a name describes a racing American Quarter Horse and this horse in particular.
Rocket Wrangler was the champion 2-year-old colt in 1970, starting 23 races in 1970-73, coming back a winner from 10 and bringing home $252,167 in earnings.
Winning his maiden race, he finished farther back in the Grade 1 Kansas Futurity, the first stop on Ruidoso Downs’ triple-crown trail. Then, with American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Nicodemus in the irons, Rocket Wrangler swept the next two, taking the Grade 1 Rainbow Futurity and Quarter Horse racing’s flagship event, the Grade 1 All American Futurity.
Bred by Thayer Hobson of Texas, Rocket Wrangler was one of five champions by American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame member Rocket Bar (TB) by Three Bars (TB), another American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame member. The sorrel colt was out of Go Galla Go, a track-record-setting stakes winner by American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame member Go Man Go, whom Thayer owned in partnership with American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame trainer C. W. “Bubba” Cascio.
Thayer died, and his widow sold the yearling colt to J. R. Adams, a paving contractor at Guymon, Oklahoma. Adams paid Rocket Wrangler into the All American Futurity, a race in which he would break from the 8 post on his way to his crowning glory on the track.
The progenitor of the earners of $9,407,809 in an era of much lower purses, Rocket Wrangler sired 56 stakes winners, including two-time AQHA world champion and Hall of Fame member Dash For Cash. He is the grandsire of AQHA Hall of Fame member First Down Dash.
He was the broodmare sire of foals with more than $14.6 million on the track, including Grade 1 winner Miami Cartel, with more than $14,500 in National Cutting Horse Association earnings and with more than 2,000 points in AQHA competition.
Rocket Wrangler died on November 29, 1992, and was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2010.
Biography updated as of March 2010.