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When it comes to cowboy hats, chicken fried steak, and high school football, the old saying that everything’s bigger in Texas is definitely true. Among the few exceptions to that rule are Thoroughbred breeding farms. Unlike Kentucky and Florida, Texas is home to only a handful of large nurseries. Instead, the state’s massive landscape is dotted with small breeders who create the backbone of Texas racing.
Lane Hutchins is their champion. With unfailing energy and dedication, Hutchins fights the good fight every day for small breeders like herself. As the vice president of the Texas Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, she provides a megaphone for those often-unheard voices. She campaigns for politicians sympathetic to racing issues. She introduces horse lovers from other disciplines to the excitement of racing firsthand at Retama Park near San Antonio. And perhaps most importantly, she offers hope by proving that you can raise a good—even a great—horse in your own backyard.
Nearly a decade ago a chestnut foal that would grow up to be named Sandburr was born just behind Hutchins’ home near Fredericksburg, where, deep in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, she and her husband, Tom, own 50 acres and a baker’s dozen of Thoroughbreds. On the night Sandburr was foaled, Hutchins had checked on his mother, the stakes-placed Silent Screen mare Lone Star Stella, several times and knew the baby was coming. She went inside to watch television, and when she came back out, the mare had done the work for her.
“There he was, a big pile of red and white,” Hutchins recalled. “I sat down in my purple nightgown and put him on my lap and the rest is history.”
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