Billings Gazette June 6, 2008

SPORTS
June 6, 2008

Roundup colt is Big Brown of Q-horses
By Bill Bighaus

While undefeated Big Brown is definitely at the center of the horse-racing universe this week, Roundup’s Toby Dahl is also living a horsy dream come true.

DMNV Mountable, a 3-year-old quarter horse he owns along with cousin Ezra Lee of Bayfield, Colo., won the $237,360 Heritage Place Derby, a Grade 1 stakes race, Sunday night at Remington Park in Oklahoma City.

With the latest victory, the talented bay colt, with a lot of speed, has thundered to the top of the American Quarter Horse Association win charts for 2008.

“When we were dreaming about having a good horse, we never dreamed this big,” said Dahl, a fifth generation cattle rancher. “It is truly a blessing.”

DMNV Mountable is believed to be the only Montana-bred quarter horse to have ever won a Grade I stakes race—and he has now done it twice.

Dahl said he has also been told that no other quarter horse has pulled off the derby double, winning the $194,623 Remington Park and Heritage Place races at the Oklahoma track in the same year.

DMNV Mountable is being trained by Jacque Uphaus, a Glasgow native, and is being ridden by 21-year veteran Kenny Muntz.

“He’s just a natural,” Uphaus said. “The colt is easy to work with. He is just wonderful. He loves attention.”

And plenty is coming his way.

Sunday’s triumph marked the colt’s eighth win in 11 career starts and the $99,691 in winnings pushed his lifetime earnings to $278,331 in less than a year’s work.

“Who could have ever dreamed a couple of ranch kids from Montana could end up with a horse like this?” asked Dahl. “It’s just amazing that this could happen. Right now, he’s the number one 3-year-old in the country.”

For the 32-year-old Dahl and the 31-year-old Lee, who is an oil field contractor, this is their first racehorse.

“It’s a Cinderella story getting this horse into the hands of Jacque Uphaus and having him ridden by Kenny Muntz,” Dahl said. “It has worked out beautifully. He has just blossomed into a big powerhouse. Kenny has been riding racehorses for 21 years and he said that he is, by far, the fastest horse he has ever ridden.

Big Brown, a 3-year-old thoroughbred, will be racing for the first Triple Crown since 1978 on Saturday at Belmont Park in New York. DMNV Mountable is now resting in Oklahoma, with at least six races—including trails—remaining for 2008.

His next start likely will come in the trials for the Grade 2 Speed Horse Derby July 11 at Fair Meadows in Tulsa, Okla., where he recorded his first win in July 2007.

Grade I races in Hobbs, NM and Dallas, TX are also on his schedule for later this year.

“It’s up in the air if he’ll run as a 4-year-old,” said Dahl. “If he’s capable of it, we’d love to have him run in a couple of age events. If not, he’s won enough money that we’re confident people will want to breed mares to him.”

If you look at his pedigree, DMNV Mountable’s race to the top should come as no surprise.

The colt’s father is Texas-bred Panther Mountain. His mother is Cheyennes Bullion.

Panther Mountain, owned by Guy Weimer of Montana, triumphed in three races and had $283,174 in winnings in 2003 en route to being recognized by the AQHA as its world Champion Aged Stallion. He had 12 wins lifetime and $459,921 in earnings.

Weimer has since moved from Park City to Oklahoma and is “one of our biggest supporters,” said Dahl.

Dahl and Lee are grandsons of Merrill and Virginia Lee of Roundup, who have owned some of the fastest quarter horses to have ever raced in Montana. Merrill died at age 91 in 2004, while Virginia still lives in Roundup.

The MNV is Mountable’s name is a salute to Merrill and Virginia, Dahl said.

“We bought five mares(from his grandparents’ estate in 2005) and this baby was attached to the bunch,” said Dahl.

Heading into the Heritage Place Derby, DMNV Mountable was the seventh-fastest qualified, but went off as the 7-5 favorite.

He stumbled slightly out of the starting gate, but Muntz guided him to the front by the halfway point in the 400 yard race and wound up winning by a head over late-charging Coronas Fast Dash, an All-American Futurity finalist in 2007.

“Kenny said in two jumps he is going 50 mph,” said Dahl. “He’s just so powerful when he leaves, the ground just gives away.”

DMNV Mountable, who turned 3 on May 9, topped the 10-horse field with a clocking of 19.704 seconds.

“Kenny was riding with a broken collarbone,” said Dahl. “That’s why I kissed him at the end of the race. I couldn’t give him a great big hug.”

DMNV Mountable spent the first 1 ½ years of his life at Toby and Jody Dahl’s Runamuk Guest Ranch, located on Goulding Creek Road.

“In all honest, sometimes it’s hard,”Dahl said of believing all the good fortune he has experienced with the colt. “It doesn’t feel like reality because it almost feels too good.”

For a time, Toby Dahl and Ezra Lee had two Panther Mountain babies and Dahl said for financial reasons they were looking to sell one. They offered DMNV Mountable, then a yearling, for $18,000 but a buyer from Nevada chose the other unnamed hose, now known as Mountain Man, for $15,000.

“That was a stroke of luck alright,” said Dahl. “There’s a lot of that in horse racing.”