Remembering Becky Halcomb

​Though they’re beautiful, strong, fast, and eternally captivating, our pricy four-legged friends who, appropriately, receive top-billing at racetracks like history-steeped Churchill Downs, star-studded Del Mar, and even my annual stomping grounds, the dusty, windswept, multipurpose acreage of the Sweetwater Events Complex in isolated Rock Springs, Wyoming, would, if their tiny brains somehow allowed such comprehension, surely be shocked to learn that life at these venues isn’t about equine. Like everywhere else, it’s about people, and our relationships with them.
 
In rustic Rock Springs, it’s about folks like my buddy Jorge Estrada, a retired big-time jockey-turned-steward who quotes the mantras of Roman generals as easily as he dissects the tape of a trainer’s objection in a tiny, rickety crow’s nest thrown together in the Carter administration, an edifice that teeters and sways, high above the action at the meet we christen Sweetwater Downs, at the torturous pleasure of the Wyoming wind. (A few years ago, an ornery Equality State gale knocked in the window at my end of the venerable room; Jorge and another stew quickly secured this slightly dazed chatterbox.)
 
It's about our intrepid boss, Eugene Joyce, born in the Big Apple and raised in the Windy City, a second-generation horseman as comfortable in malodorous stalls as he is hobnobbing in steakhouses with politicians and financiers.
 
It’s about my pal Al Worley, as Rock Springs they come, a crusty, chain-smoking, program-hawking old-timer who routinely humbles this correspondent in the fine art of sarcasm. Al and much of his family, including his wife and daughter, are integral parts of our makeshift operation, one pressed into action each mid-August through late September.
 
It’s about our mutuel manager, Nina Condos, daughter of a Wyoming state trooper and the rare American of Greek heritage who cares not for olives. Though quick with a joke, she’s deadly serious at the till, adroitly accounting for and accurately paying out the monies wagered by our patrons in the high-risk, tightly regulated world of picking the ponies.
 
And it’s certainly about the First Family of Sweetwater Downs, the Phelps, an esteemed clan out of quaint Pond Creek, Oklahoma, a hamlet of 850 souls a cool 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. Patriarch Harvey Phelps is the Sport of Kings’ undisputed monarch of small track photography. For a half-century, the Illinois native – you’d never guess those Land of Lincoln roots for he’s all Okie now – has partnered with his wife Lois, Sooner State born-and-raised, to provide photo-finish technology and winner’s circle pictures.
 
Unsurprisingly, since Harvey and Lois began in this incredibly niche field, technological advancements have driven amazingly precise timings and enabled instant, high-definition replays of even the tightest races. In out-of-the-way Rock Springs, a command truck, akin to one oft seen at a televised football game, houses the hardware delivering definitive proof of the paramount win-place-show ordering.
 
For my first half-decade as Sweetwater Downs’ track announcer, Becky Halcomb, née Phelps, deftly managed the truck. The high school valedictorian and Oklahoma State University’s top 1993 College of Agriculture graduate, Becky certainly was the operation’s brains. Her aw shucks demeanor, one that never sought the limelight, belied a steely resolve to rigorously demand and deliver excellence, from herself, her direct charges, and even a greenhorn announcer who desperately needed guidance on appropriate timing for introducing jocks and horses after the call to post.
 
Horse racing, like life, is extremely unfair. A lucky longshot makes one bettor happy while ruining the race for fifty wise guys. Halfway through a Quarter Horse trial, the wind changes direction, sapping speed from the equine yet to run. A prized Thoroughbred, romping to victory, stumbles and shatters a leg, ending its race, career, and life.
 
Friday morning 9 August at 10 AM CDT, Harvey and Lois buried their beautiful daughter.
 
Becky, a friend to so many, stoically –  “never a complaint” says her grieving husband, Sam – battled colon cancer since 2018. On Monday, the former champion horse woman who saddled horses her mother raised, finally lost her toughest race. A woman of salvational faith in Christ of Nazareth, Jennifer Rebecca Halcomb hurts no more. But as our hearts hurt for Harvey and Lois, Sammy Joe, and the Phelps and Halcomb families, know that Becky’s life left us a winning ticket, the proceeds of which we, luckily, may continue to cash and spend.