Top Moon
Although he was an AAT runner and earned more than $40,000 during his racing career, Top Moon did not make a name for himself until he was retired for breeding.
Bred by James Carter of Clovis, California, Top Moon was foaled in 1960, the result of the only mating between AQHA Hall of Fame member Moon Deck and Rica Bar. The black stallion was owned by Clary Spencer of Oklahoma and a combination of partners for the majority of his life until he was sold to Larry Blackmon of Mineral Wells, Texas in December 1982.
Top Moon sired 1,829 foals, including 1,340 starters, 795 winners and 74 stakes winners. His get earned 804 racing Registers of Merit. His offspring included 78 Superior-Award winners and four World Champions who won a total of nine World Championships.
Top Moon is known as a prolific sire within the race industry, but he was certainly able to hold his own on the track as well. In his three-year career on the racetrack, he ran a speed index of 100 or greater eight times, won or placed in nine stakes races and earned $40,637.
Top Moon’s first World Champion was sired in his second of 20 crops. Top Bug, out of Lady Lasan, earned the title of World Champion 2-Year-Old Filly in 1968 and set a new track record in Laredo, Texas that same year.
His most successful son was multiple World Champion Moon Lark, who followed his sire’s lineage, becoming a top-quality speed sire. The son of Top Moon and the Lanolark (TB) mare Pan O Lan, Moon Lark earned five World Champion Titles and the 1978 title of high-money-earning horse. The All American Futurity Winner in 1978, he earned $859,356, making him Top Moon’s leading money earner.
Top Moon’s foals did not just excel on the track; they also have made their presence known in the show ring. Sixty-two of his son’s and daughters have performed in the show ring, earning 126 Halter points and 1,314 performance points, three Superiors and 19 Registers of Merit.
In 1984, Top Moon died from complications that began as an ear infection. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 1999.
