May 12, 2022
Vol. 22, No. 52
In This Issue FOUR SEASONS
Coming up roses
Four Seasons, by Kevin Box, in real life is located in front of the Center for Transformative Learning on the UCO campus, but this week is hidden somewhere in our paper. Email contest@edmondpaper.com with the correct location to be entered in the weekly drawing. For more information, see page 4.
Edmond principal Receives recognition
See page 11
FRIDAY, May 13
Partly Cloudy High 88° Low 64°
SATURDAY, May 14 PM Thunderstorms High 85° Low 60°
SUNDAY, May 15 Sunny High 82° Low 61°
Edmond’s Rick Dawson owns horse that won Kentucky Derby Editor’s Note: The news release below is from Oklahoma City’s Remington Park and chronicles the remarkable victory of Rich Strike in the 2022 Kentucky Derby. The horse is owned by Rick Dawson of Edmond. Only once in 1913 had another Derby winner had greater odds against it. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of horsemen have held dreams of Kentucky Derby greatness throughout their careers. Only 148 times have breeders, owners, trainers and jockeys been able to have the dreams become reality. On May 7, an Oklahoman was added to the list of dream believers. Rick Dawson of Edmond, who owns and races horses as Red TR-Racing, scored the biggest win of his brief racing career when Rich Strike, at odds of 80-1, won the 148th Kentucky Derby by three-quarters of a length. Trained by Eric Reed, jockey Sonny Leon put a brilliant ride on the feisty Rich Strike to thread through traffic in the stretch, navigating from the back of the pack, to defeat 19 rivals and win the most prestigious
horse race in North America. Dawson, a semi-retired oil/gas businessman, was reached in Kentucky, less than 24 hours from winning the derby. He has only been an owner for a few years and counts Rich Strike as his only active horse. He started owning horses while on a fact-finding mission with another prominent breeder and owner from Oklahoma. “I ran into Everett Dobson at Oak Tree National, where I live in Edmond, and started picking his brain about owning horses. I always liked going to the track, I’ve been doing that for 30-40 years. There is a great thrill in racing. I enjoy the handicapping, the studying, the problem-solving in wagering. I thought it was time to maybe own a horse. Everett invited me to a sale with him in Lexington, Ky., where I was able to shadow him and pick his brain about everything. When I left, I had become a small minority owner in five horses. I went there to observe and came away an owner. “After a while I realized that if it was worth owning a horse, it was worth owning the horse 100-percent.
I got out of the partnerships I was in and refocused.” Reed bases his operation at his training center in Lexington and normally races around the Midwest. How did an Oklahoman get involved with a trainer in another time zone? “I spent about three years on a job for my business in Kentucky a few years ago and an acquaintance introduced me to Eric. I really liked his smaller operation, which fit my needs better. He is very transparent in the way he does things, he is always willing to talk and continues to teach me about horses. He treats his horses right and puts them first and that’s the way we approach things with Rich Strike.” Rich Strike became the first horse that was ever claimed out of a race, to then go on and win the Kentucky Derby. Dawson and Reed claimed the colt for $30,000 out of a race at Churchill Downs on Sept. 17, 2021. “I am a Keen Ice fan. He is still a new stallion but I’ve always liked him and he is the sire of Rich Strike. I was looking at the Churchill past continued on Page 3