FUNNY CIDE TAKES AIM ON TRIPLE CROWN

After mild-mannered Kentucky Derby upset,
Barclay Tagg-trained gelding wins over skeptics while capturing the Preakness by nine and
three-quarters lengths, the second widest margin in the race's 128-year history.
by Sean Clancy

One minute to post for the Preakness Stakes and Mike Sellito, agent for jockey Jose Santos, lets out a deep breath and smiles a nervous smile. ''It's all about the trip, you know that.''
Then the 10 horses load into the gate for the 128th Preakness and the trip of a lifetime gets a little bit better.
''Tuck in, Jose. Tuck in.''
''OK, OK. But we had to use the horse to get there.''
''Just wait Jose.''
''Just wait kid.''
''Just sit Jose.''
''You're not moving yet.''
''Just sit kid.''
''Don't do nothing.''
''Just wait Jose.''
''Now, give it to him baby.''
''Give it to him baby.''
''Give it to him baby.''
''Give it to him baby.''
''We're going to New York. We're going to New York.''
And you can come along too. For the first time in (let's face it, history) the Triple Crown is achievable to everyone.

Funny Cide, a New York-bred gelding owned by 10 friends and trained by a walk-rub-and-ride-'em horseman, upset the Kentucky Derby with a perfect trip and decimated the Preakness with a flawless wallop.

In the Derby, Funny Cide was in the cocoon of a lifetime, sitting perfectly in stalking position while the Bobby Frankel team of Empire Maker and Peace Rules ran hard all the way to finish second and third. After the race, it still could have been a fluke. Empire Maker, the golden son of this year's Triple Crown, had missed training with a bruised foot. He raced wide for most of the race and then hung in the stretch. After the race, Hall of Famers Jerry Bailey and Frankel
claimed that Empire Maker was still the better horse. That notion was plausible after the Derby, and ludicrous as Funny Cide turned for home in the Preakness, right about the time when Sellito yelled ''Give it to him baby.'' That's when the Derby looked like a prep for the
Preakness and the reality of another ride to Belmont Park with everything on the line came to fruition. But this time, there are seats for everyone.

Sackatoga Stable consists of nine buddies who followed managing partner Jack Knowlton's passion for the game and bought into his idea of starting a low-budget racing syndicate. Eight years ago, the syndicate was formed when five of them each put up $5,000 to buy their first horse. The money's never left the table. They rode to the Derby in a school bus to save expenses and booked it again for the Preakness to save karma.

Chances are if you're reading this magazine, you've had some buddies who wanted to buy a horse together, or you've worked hard on the backside at Pimlico or you've been through the wringer of Thoroughbred racing. Sackatoga Stable, Barclay Tagg and Jose Santos are the flamethrowers for each entity. And they were one race away from the Triple Crown. It's never
felt like this.

Last year it was an Arab prince with money to burn. This year it's a band of middle Americans with nothing to lose. Sackatoga Stable is the workingman's syndicate. There's a retired schoolteacher, a construction manager and a retired house builder. Tagg, a former steeplechase jockey, has been banging away at training horses for 30-plus years. Tagg's assistant and partner Robin Smullen has put in her hours like a prisoner does time, hoping for a break for good behavior. Santos is a veteran jockey who escaped poverty in Chile and fought the rising tide of a waning career in America. Sellito, for that matter, is a former New York City police officer who turned into a jock's agent. The bandwagon is getting crowded.

Funny Cide throttled the Preakness field by nine and three-quarters lengths. Longshot Midway Road finished second with the Wayne Lukas-trained Scrimshaw third. As Funny Cide galloped out in the Preakness, the Sackatoga crew swarmed itself toward the infield. Suddenly a syndicate had become a mob. They belted out ''Start spreading the news'' from Frank Sinatra's classic. Members blurted out whatever was on their mind. ''This isn't even half of
us.''
''We're going to have some time in Belmont.''
''Unbelievable.''
Dave Mahan, who owns a catering business and is one of the more visible members of the crew, tried to sum it up as he bounded his way to the infield winner's circle.
''Oh man, it's incredible what's going on here. This was the most nervous one because in the Derby we thought we'd run really good but we were hoping. This one we expected him to run real good,'' Mahan said. ''Barclay said he's perfect, he's better than he was in the Derby but we had to prove it. It's been nerve-wracking all day waiting for it to come. And now it's here.''
Was it ever. The Preakness Stakes was here in all its glory. This had the local flavor of Deputed Testamony in 1983. It had the awe-inspiring performance of Secretariat in 1973. It had the weight of Silver Charm, Real Quiet and War Emblem. But most of all, it had the purity and sheer possibility that only Funny Cide in 2003 could provide. ''Oh my God. It's like a dream, like you're walking in the clouds and everything is happening to you,'' Santos said. ''People have been so nice, telling me congratulations and you can see it in their faces that they mean
it, they are really happy about it.''

The road map for this trip has a lot of on ramps, a lot of roadblocks, and a whole lot of miles logged. Tagg and Santos could write the book on how to persevere in horse racing. Sackatoga could write the foreword, title it something like ''How to have a good time in horse racing while not breaking your bank.''

Tagg went to Penn State and graduated to steeplechase racing in the mid-1960s. He rode for Morris Dixon, Burley Cocks, Jonathan Sheppard, Ronnie Houghton and then needed a change. He went out on his own as a flat trainer at Pimlico in 1971 with one ''board-bill'' filly who was given to him by his good friend Charlie Kelly. It's been, in his words, ''scuffle ever since.''
Tagg doesn't miss a day of work, he doesn't mince words and he doesn't paint a pretty picture if it isn't pretty. A fellow trainer once said, ''He's not in nearly as bad a mood as he seems because he loves being miserable.'' He admits to being pessimistic, and he has realism down to a way of life. ''Is it frustrating? All the time,'' Tagg said of the training profession.
''You get up every morning and find things wrong and try to correct them. Then you call the owners and tell them you got to wait another six weeks. Everybody's mad at you.'' Right now, nobody's mad at Tagg, other than maybe Frankel and some other 3-year-old trainers who had their molds broken with Tagg's run through the Triple Crown. Triple Crown icons Bob Baffert and D. Wayne Lukas have been nothing but race-fillers in this year's classics.

It's simply good for the game to have a new voice at the podium. One who didn't start the Triple Crown trail with more numbers than NASDAQ, one who forced writers to look in the press guide for biographical facts, one who comes from the other side of the tracks. Funny Cide, bred by WinStar Farm LLC (Kenny Troutt and Bill Casner) and foaled at McMahon Thoroughbreds in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is the once-in-a-lifetime horse for Tagg. He knew it for a long time. Tagg saw the gelded son of Distorted Humor at the Saratoga yearling sales
originally but passed him over. He saw him again at Tony Everard's Another Episode farm in Ocala, Fla., and fell in love. Each time he came to the farm, Tagg's eyes couldn't get off the solid chestnut even if the price kept going up. Tagg was struggling to find a client but finally managed to convince Sackatoga, who had some money in the bank after a horse got claimed, to raise their bet. ''These guys were looking for a New York-bred and you couldn't turn him down. We just kept seeing him out the corner of our eyes,'' Tagg said. ''I called them up and said, ''Think you guys can come up with $75,000?' They said, ''Well, I don't know. . .' I said, ''I got a horse I really like.' They said, ''If you really like him then'. . . That made me feel good.''
Funny Cide has done nothing to dispel Tagg's original opinion. He won his first three starts in New York-bred company (including two stakes) and then slowly learned his lessons while getting bounced around in the top shelf of the 3-year-old class. He finished fifth in the Holy Bull Stakes-G3 at Gulfstream, third in the Louisiana Derby-G2 at Fair Grounds to Peace Rules,
and second to Empire Maker in the Wood Memorial-G1. Each race was a little better than the last and Tagg, outwardly reluctant but inwardly confident, kept on the Triple Crown trail.
Tagg shipped Funny Cide to Churchill Downs later than what's supposed to be the only way to do it. Three days out and just as planned. He never wavered in his belief and after two legs, it's clear that the man knows what he's doing.

Santos is comfortable with horse, trainer and situation. ''I have plenty of confidence in the horse because I know he's the best 3-year-old. I have plenty of confidence in the trainer because I know he's going to do the best for the horse and I know he knows how to train horses to go that far,'' Santos said, referring to the one and a half miles of the Belmont. ''Everybody is rooting for Funny Cide and all the connections. It's been 25 years and we haven't had a Triple Crown winner and there's been a lot of horses that have tried in the Belmont. I think this year will be different.'' It's definitely been different so far. As with any good horse racing story, it hasn't been without controversy. Days after the Derby, the Miami Herald ran a story alleging that Santos carried an electrical device, a battery, in
the Derby. A photograph was bandied around the media showing a dark spot
inside Santos's right hand.

The newspaper botched an interview with Santos, quoting him as saying he had a ''cue ring'' to call the outriders in his hand. He was referring to a Q Ray bracelet that he wears to cure arthritis. Call the outrider, cure arthritis? Santos's Chilean accent is heavy. This is the man who was quoted as saying Funny Cide was moving like an ice machine instead of a nice machine. The Churchill Downs stewards held an investigation, and quickly determined
that the black spot in Santos's hand was, shockingly, a black spot. But the damage was done, racing was on the front pages for all the wrong reasons again. That was one of the reasons why Funny Cide needed to win the Preakness. To give the world another chance at the Triple Crown and to bury the battery rumors. The battery had a short shelf life. ''I know I was clean but I had to prove to the people that I was clean. My lawyer, my agent and my wife got together for two days. We had 280 pictures against one,'' Santos said. ''Ninety-nine percent of the people were behind us. Whoever knows how to watch a race knows that it was impossible for me to carry something. I hit him right-handed, switched to left-handed, went back to right-handed. I would have to be the best magician in the world to carry something besides the whip.''

It was just another mile to log for Santos. He clawed his way out of the Chile ghetto, then kept clawing his way through a drug habit in Colombia and finally made a home in this country. He rose to the very top of the game and then gradually slid back down the same path that he once scaled. A divorce, injuries and a basic lack of fashionability among racing's elite jockeys had him laboring for business. ''In this career you have to learn to have patience. I have a lot of patience. I have ridden a lot of good horses but they never made it all the way, they disappeared. Now, I find my real good horse,'' Santos said. ''I never thought I'd be in this position. I always dreamt of having a good horse in the Kentucky Derby but I never imagine winning the Kentucky Derby. And then the Preakness, forget about it. And now, we're going to go for the Triple Crown.''

As Funny Cide crossed the wire in the Preakness, vindication and jubilation rushed over Santos. He stood tall in his irons, pumped his right fist, then held up two fingers and then flashed an open palm like David Copperfield after a good trick. The pixie dust was scattered all over the 100,268 on hand. ''I keep him busy until the wire. When I passed the wire, I put my hand to my mouth and threw a kiss to God. Then I did the victory sign. Then I opened my
hand,'' Santos said. ''When I watched the video, it came from my heart not because I knew I was going to do it. It came from my heart, feel like God told me to open my hand.''

Back at the stakes barn after the races, the Sackatoga crew sang New York, New York with bugler Joe Kelly leading the charge. They hoisted Funny Cide's wooden saddling plaque in the air and whirled around like a Mardi Gras parade. Tagg uneasily walked through the crowd, shaking hands and trying to keep it all in perspective‹which was getting more and more difficult even for Tagg.

Maryland jockey Nik Goodwin congratulated the hometown hero. A woman handed Tagg a straw hat to sign. Another woman said she loved him. Pimlico's stable manager Gelo Hall shook his hand and said it as well as anyone. ''Now it's all worth it,'' Hall said. ''We need those rich guys but this is good for all the little people. You know time and chance happens to us all.''
And that's what this one was about. Time and chance. And keeping the belief that time and chance will happen to us all. As the party was still going strong, Knowlton and Tagg had another business meeting. ''You have to come over to the Marriott,'' Knowlton said to Tagg. ''We're all going over and want you to be there.'' ''Jack, I was up at 4:30 this morning while you all were sleeping,'' Tagg said. ''And I'm going to be looking at 2-year-olds at Timonium at 7 in the morning while you all are sleeping. And then the I'll be up the next morning. . .''
Knowlton nodded his head and smiled. Tagg nodded his head and smiled. One went to the Marriott, the other went to bed. Both at the very top of the game.

Along with the rest of us.