Runaway Winner joins his owner in the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame. It’s where both belong.
“Runaway Winner earned it by a combination of things,” says owner Jerry Windham, who was AQHA president in 2000 and entered the Hall of Fame in 2006. “He was a really nice racehorse. But his siring ability, especially on broodmares, put him there. ‘Runaway’ was a good sire of racehorses, but he excelled as a broodmare sire.”
Jerry purchased Runaway Winner for $42,000 at the Super Select Yearling Sale in New Mexico. Foaled April 1, 1985, Runaway Winner was by Beduino and out of the stakes placed Fast Jet mare Miss Fast.
Runaway Winner won two Grade 1 races, the Kindergarten Futurity at Los Alamitos and El Primero Del Ano Derby at Bay Meadows. With a second in the Bandera Downs Futurity and a third in the Dash For Cash Futurity (G1), the colt retired from the track with a record of 14-7 (2)-1 (1)-2 (1) and $369,442.
With 647 winners from 927 starters, Runaway Winner sired champions Deceptively and Treacherously, 63 other stakes winners, 69 stakes placed sprinters and the earners of $13,729,836.It was his daughters, especially, that ensure his legacy. Through 2016, Runaway Winner’s daughters have been represented by 79 stakes winners, 785 other winners and the earners of more than $33.8 million from 1,463 starters, to rank him as the 11th all-time-leading broodmare sire.
One of Runaway Winner’s stakes-placed offspring was Jerry’s Veva Jean, who became the dam of his homebred gelding Stolis Winner, the world champion in 2008 after winning that year’s Grade 1 All American, Rainbow and Heritage Place futurities. The fourth all-time-leading dam of racing Quarter Horses, Veva Jean also produced 2014 Rainbow Futurity winner Trendi and Grade 1 winner Stimulus.
Runaway Winner’s last offspring was foaled in 2008. The stallion lived out his retirement in a spacious grass paddock on the Windham Ranch at College Station, Texas. Euthanized in 2015, the paternal grandsire of then-world champion JRC Callas First was 30 years old.
Runaway Winner was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2018.
Biography updated as of March 2018.