Campaigned Eclipse Award winners Temperence Hill, Vanlandingham and Prairie Bayou
Among the most celebrated owners in Oaklawn history, John Ed Anthony’s Shortleaf Stable has had a resurgence in recent years. Was a dominant figure in the 1980s and 90s, campaigning champions Temperence Hill, Vanlandingham and Prairie Bayou as well as Preakness winner Pine Bluff. Among his best horses in 2021 were Smarty Jones winner Caddo River and Oaklawn allowance winner Plainsman, who won the Grade 3 Ack Ack at Churchill and two other listed stakes.
Shortleaf was formed after Anthony and former wife Mary Lynn Dudley phased out
Loblolly’s racing and breeding operation in the mid-1990s.
• Prominent horses to race in Loblolly’s chocolate brown and yellow colors include three champions: Temperence Hill (3-year-old male of 1980), Vanlandingham (older male of 1985) and Prairie Bayou (3-year-old male of 1993).
• Had Grade 1 winners Cox's Ridge, Pine Bluff, Little Missouri, Demons Begone, De Roche
and Lost Mountain.
• Loblolly's first nationally prominent runner was Cox's Ridge, who, carrying 130 pounds, won the prestigious 1978 Metropolitan Handicap (G1) at Belmont Park.
• Shortleaf Stable started with runners in 2000 and was later reorganized in 2010 with the assistance of his son Ed Anthony, a pedigree and bloodstock analyst.
• Earned first classic victory with Temperence Hill in the 1980 Belmont Stakes (G1); Prairie Bayou won the 1993 Preakness (G1) after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby (G1). He suffered a fatal injury in the Belmont Stakes (G1), was euthanized, and is buried at Longfield Farm in Goshen, Kentucky.
• Won back-to-back editions of the Preakness (G1) with Pine Bluff in 1992 and Prairie Bayou in 1993; only three other owners have landed consecutive runnings in the 20th Century:
joining Harry Payne Whitney (1927, 1928), Calumet Farm (1947, 1948) and The Thoroughbred Corp. (2001, 2002).
• At Oaklawn, Anthony won the Rebel Stakes and Arkansas Derby in the same year three times: 1980 with Temperence Hill, 1987 with Demons Begone and 1992 with Pine Bluff.
• Elected as member of The Jockey Club in 1993.
• Anthony was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Arkansas Business Hall of Fame in 2012. He names many of his horses after places in his native south Arkansas. He is chairman of Anthony Timberlands, Inc., founded by his grandfather, Garland Anthony in 1907, and his family has been associated with the lumber/timber industry in south Arkansas for more than 100 years.
• Graduate in 1961 from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Science degree
in Business Administration.