Gail Ruffu

Gail Elizabeth Ruffu (born circa 1950) is an American horse trainer and is the subject of a 2018 graphic novel by Greg Neri, Grand Theft Horse. She studied riding in Europe as a teen. Returning to the United States, she was a riding instructor in the 1980s. She began training racehorses in the 1990s, promoting the use of gentle methods without the use of any type of medication. Ruffu's training style was unorthodox and she was once suspended for nine months from California tracks in part for her activism, though the suspension was later reversed. In 2004, Ruffu became a 20% owner of a horse named Urgent Envoy, whom she trained, and after being fired as his trainer, became the subject of controversy when she took the horse from his other owners. She was charged with theft and later acquitted, but her racing license was suspended for almost seven years. To this day, the horse remains at an undisclosed location. Ruffu continues to train other racehorses but to date has never won a reported race.

Biography Early years Ruffu is of Creole descent. Her father was in the Air Force, and she and her 12 siblings moved throughout the world during her childhood. Ruffu was in Denton, Texas in the early 1960s, where she attended religious school for grade school students at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. In Texas, she took part in barrel racing in 1966. Ruffu graduated from Denton High School in 1967. At age 17, she started studying in Europe, learning equestrianism and stable management. She also worked as the editor and publisher of the Washington Horseman's Directory. Racing stewards would not comment on the reasons for her suspension, but Ruffu stated that it was, in part, because of her training style, her activism against use of drugs on racehorses, and her opposition to racing two-year-old horses. The suspension was reversed by an administrative tribunal in 1998, but she asked the courts to award her compensation for lost income. Ruffu was also concerned about the number of horses injured and killed in the racing industry, believing that overuse of medication allowed horse to race while injured. For a year, Ruffu trained Urgent Envoy according to her methods. She limited workouts and didn't use analgesic drugs to mask pain in the horse, nor use the common anti-bleeding medication Lasix, and instead allowed Urgent Envoy to rest in order to recover naturally from injuries. Ruffu said jockey had difficulty riding Urgent Envoy, but Haney said there were more problems: "he couldn't participate in the post parade because he hadn't been taught how to walk with the other horses.... It just looked like he wasn't prepared.” Ruffu still believes her actions were not theft, but rescue, and as of 2019 has not disclosed the location of Urgent Envoy. In 2018, Grand Theft Horse by Ruffu's cousin, Greg Neri, was published. The graphic novel describes the events surrounding Urgent Envoy and tells of Ruffu's past through flashbacks.