Few people have had as long and varied a career in the American Quarter Horse racing industry as Ben Hudson.
Benny Lewis Hudson purchased his first Quarter Horse as a teenager growing up in the 1950s. Since then, he has served many parts of the industry, most prominently as the publisher and editor of Track Magazine, but also as a breeder and owner of racehorses.
Ben was born in Sherman, Texas, and moved several times with his family before ending up in Fort Worth. A part-time job at a print shop led to Ben’s interest in newspapers and, eventually, a journalism scholarship to Texas Christian University.
After earning his degree, he spent four years in the U.S. Navy and planned to go to law school after his discharge. A chance meeting with Benny Scott led to a job with Scott’s magazine The Quarter Racing Record.
“I started going to the races, saw the horses, met the horsemen, the trainers and owners and jockeys, and just fell in love with the whole deal,” he said. “I never left.”
Ben worked for the Record from 1971 until 1975, when he and Jerry McAdams left to begin Track Magazine. Now the sole owner of the oldest and largest independently owned publication serving what he calls “the running Quarter Horse business,” Ben still spends much of his time on the road attending major races and events throughout the nation.
Ben was a driving force in getting pari-mutuel racing in Texas and was a founding partner in Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie.
He and wife Christine live on their Quarter Horse farm at Morgan Mill, Texas, from where the couple base their Quarter Horse Track Publishers Inc. Raising only three or four babies a year, their program ranked among the nation’s top 15 breeders in 2015.
“It’s pretty incredible when you’re awarded something for just doing your job and having the best job there is in racing,” he says. “The horses I’ve gotten to see and record their achievements, the people that I’ve become friends with, and to get paid to do what I’ve done for all these years, is absolutely incredible. We are much blessed.”
Hudson was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2016.
Biography updated as of March 2016.