TRACK’s Monday Report of 3-13-06 Reprint: World Champion Special Effort was put down on
Saturday at the 6666 Ranch in Guthrie, Texas. The 27-year-old stallion won the Ruidoso two-year-old
Triple Crown in 1981 . . . a feat that has never been duplicated. Dr. Blodgett said Special Effort had been
bred to only one mare this season and that it did not result in a pregnancy.
Bred by master horseman Allen Moehrig of Seguin, Texas, Special Effort was purchased in May of his
two-year-old season by Dan and Jolene Urschel of Three Bar D Ranch near Canadian, Texas. The
Urschels, under the guidance of long-gone super agent Don Tyner, sold $100,000 lifetime breeding rights
in the horse in a couple of days at Ruidoso that year, and the horse entered stud at their place in 1983.
Special Effort’s first crop of 94 foals hit the tracks in 1986 and included in that crop was the Champion
Bully Bullion $225,000, and Make An Effort $187,000. The next crop included Special Effort’s all-time
leading money earner in the 1987 All American Futurity winner Elans Special $1.2 Million and
Champion Easygo Effort $432,000. Through this week, Special Effort’s runners had earned $18,162,277
to rank him #6 among the all-time leading sires of money earners. He has sired 73 stakes winners that
won 126 stakes races, the most recent being Caliente Habanero’s win in the 2004 Grade III Mount
Pleasant Meadows Budweiser Futurity.
Special Effort was leased by Lazy E prior to the 1988 breeding season and Ed Gaylord purchased him
just prior to the 1990 breeding season; the next year the stallion was transferred to the ownership of
Gaylord’s Lazy E Ranch.
When the Burnett Ranches revived their race breeding program in 1993 they purchased Special Effort
shortly after they struck a deal that brought Streakin Six and Dash For Cash to the 6666’s. Dr. Glenn
Blodgett, who began his veterinary practice in the Texas Panhandle, was the first person to collect
Special Effort and also the last. “I feel very fortunate to have been around such a great horse, and we
were very proud to have him here.”
Special Effort currently has 1,786 registered foals with his biggest crop (136) being foaled in 1989. He
has 42 two-year-olds this year (foals of 2004) and 24 foals of 2005 have been registered.
Special Effort’s sons Strawfly Special and Special Leader both ranked among the Top 10 sires of 2005
money earners. Strawfly Special ranks No. 7 among the all-time leading sires of money earners at $20.7
Million. Daughters of Special Effort have produced the winners of more than $25.7 Million, with the
leading money earner being Champion Eyesa Special $1.4 Million (also bred by Allen Moehrig).
“We had a lot of people wanting to breed to him this year,” Dr. Blodgett told TRACK. “Most of them
seem to want to breed to try to get a Special Effort mare. I think he would have been even more popular
in the last few years, but his semen did not ship well.” Blodgett said he had a very limited quantity of
frozen semen on the horse.
Special Effort was laid to rest at the 6666’s, next to Streakin Six. The two had spent a dozen years just
across the aisle from each other in the 6666 stallion barn from 1993 to 2005.
<(' ')> <(' ')>What a GREAT stallion