AMHA Person of the Year: Rick Lane
Monday, February 10, 2020
In 1990, Rick Lane spotted a three-year-old colt at the Morgan World Championship show and thought he’d be a potential breeding prospect for clients. The colt was Futurity French Command who would produce 300 foals and become a number one sire. If Rick did little else than steward the career of this horse his place in Morgan history would be assured.
But French was just the start. In the 1990s and 2000s, Rick’s Cabot Morgans became the most significant Stallion Station in the Morgan breed; known as The Cabot Collection, standing Liberation First Star, Century Free Spirit, Nobility, and Cedar Creek Harlequin. He managed the breeding interests of the late Marthe Morse, Robin Rednor Veghte and, most significantly, George Schott’s Maine Event Morgans. Today there are more than 250 MEM-prefixed Morgans out of some of the best mares in the business.
At the same time Rick turned out a show string that included Morgan greats like Medomak Ever Beamin’, Limerick Pepper Don, Simple Dreams, M E M Blue Chip, Bery B Sis Boom Ba, JW Charity, and you can’t even begin to count the many with Cabot, MEM, or French in their names.
As Rick’s Morgan horse business evolved he moved Cabot to the 5,000-acre countryside campus of Pineland Farms in New Gloucester, Maine. The state-of-the-art home is now where thousands of Pineland visitors have the opportunity to see a Morgan horse up close and personal. Rick, the onsite tour guide, is the perfect “concierge” ensuring that each visitor has a completely unique Morgan experience - from petting a foal to driving a world champion; a Pineland/Cabot visit welcomes tens of thousands of visitors to our breed each year.
And that is among the reasons the beautiful facility now hosts the National Museum of the Morgan Horse display at Pineland. Morgan enthusiasts and those new to horses now view our breed’s history just a few steps away from a real live Morgan horse.
AMHA recognizes that Richard Chandler Lane didn’t have to do all of this. He had Morgan horse laurels to rest on. But his unselfish devotion to becoming our breed’s cheerleader to the public and the host to the artifacts of Morgan Museum make him a clear choice as AMHA Person of the Year.
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