You won’t find too many horsemen under the age of 50 who have had careers in almost every discipline of horse sports.
Rodney Quinn has done a little bit of everything with success with show jumpers, standardbreds which he owned, trained and drove, Thoroughbred training and Quarter Horse training and riding.
A true lover of the horse, Quinn remembers the first horse who made an impression on him when he was still a toddler.
“I have been around so many different kinds of horses but it actually was a Quarter Horse who first spurred on my life in horses,” said Quinn. “I was about 3 or 4 and being raised around horses.”
San Rojo’s Echo, a giant, sorrel stallion with four white socks and a thick white blaze lost his dam when he was born in 1969, one year before Quinn was born. It was Quinn’s father Bob, who trained the first ever winner at Picov Downs, who had to hand raise his foal while they lived on the Alec Picov property adjacent to the old ‘J’ track.
By the time San Rojo’s Echo was of racing age, he was 16 hands high, a bit of a rogue stallion and not to be messed with in the stall unless, of course, you are a fearless little kid.
“I have seen home movies of me hanging in a papoose, from a nail, outside of his stall,” said Quinn. “He put a few people in hospital, that horse, but when I was little I could walk right into his stall.”
When the colt began racing, Quinn was trackside with his father and a love of horse racing took hold. “My Dad was just dabbling in racing horses back then and he left the business in ’76. I eventually started training later.”
Quinn was the recipient of the George Egerton Memorial Award by the Quarter Racing Owners of Ontario Inc. last fall at the annual awards ceremony for “an individual who goes above and beyond the call to help all people at the track.”
For Quinn, he owes some of that recognition to the San Rojo’s Echo, the Quarter Horse who changed his life.
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