Rex Peterson’s White Thoroughbred Dream Comes True in Kentucky: Hollywood Horse Trainer’s Rare Racehorse Bound for Potential Stardom

Rex Peterson‘s name needs no introduction to horse movie fans. The trainer has been behind the scenes on many of the great horse movies we all know and love. Most recently, he worked on Secretariat for Disney. Many of us are old enough to remember that he worked on Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer,too, back when Scarlett Johansson was cast as a pre-teen girl and dressed in bib overalls.

And today he made the news doing something that hundreds of people do every year: He went to Kentucky and bought a horse. A Thoroughbred, to be exact. Nothing unusual about that–so far!

But this horse didn’t come from the auction ring at Keeneland or the Red Mile or Fasig Tipton. And it’s not a bay or chestnut or even a gray like the rest of the Thoroughbreds.

Rex Peterson bought one of the rare-as-hens’ teeth white Thoroughbreds that you read about now and again. He’ll head back to Hollywood with Arctic Bright, a product of Kentucky whom we will surely see again. He might be carrying a knight or rearing on top of a cliff in a car ad or starring in a movie of his own.

Arctic Bright raced at Kentucky’s Turfway Park earlier this year, and was owned by the Megson family of western Kentucky until today, when a press conference outside Lexington announced his sale to Peterson. The Megsons bought Arctic Bright as a weanling at the Keeneland sales. They might have dreamed that he’d be a star on the racetrack, but things have a funny way of working out when you’re a rare beauty, and Hollywood calls your name.

To learn more about white Thoroughbreds, take a minute to read a lovely Daily Racing Form blog post by photographerBarbara Livingston, complete with beautiful photographs, about the Thoroughbred stallion The White Fox, who died recently in Kentucky at Patchen Wilkes Farm, a breeding establishment known for its white Thoroughbreds. If you click on the Barbara Livingston link, you will see an entire gallery of her amazing white Thoroughbred photographs.

by Fran Jurga | The Jurga Report at Equisearch.comBe friends withFran Jurga on Facebook.comTweet

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