At the time Sharon Magness Blake’s first husband, Tele-Communications Inc. founder Bob Magness, died in 1996, she estimates they had a ranch with about 900 Arabian horses. She continued racing for about five years after her husband’s death, she says, “but then it became overwhelming.”
Magness Blake began to sell the horses off, and by the time she began looking for a new ranch in 2002 with her future husband Ernie Blake, “I only had about 30 horses,” she says. Of the steeds she kept, one was of particular importance: Thunder, the official mascot of the Denver Broncos.