They call it Nuckols Farm. For War Emblem, the colt who in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes will try to become American thoroughbred racing’s 12th Triple Crown winner, it’s my old Kentucky home.
Located on the outskirts of this quaint dot on the map, the 1,110-acre farm has been in the family for more than 100 years and for more than 40 of those years the master of the farm, Charles Nuckols Jr., has been a matchmaker for mares owned by Russell Reineman.
What began as a business relationship quickly evolved into a fast and enduring friendship between the 79-year-old horse farmer who oversees the family spread in the pastoral bluegrass country of Kentucky and the 84-year-old owner of Crown Steel Sales Inc. on Chicago’s Southwest Side.
Charlie Nuckols is assisted in the thoroughbred arm of the operation by his son, Charles Nuckols III, whose father and friends know him as “Nucks.” Another son, James, tends to the 200 beef cattle who reside on the horse farm and the 40 acres used to raise tobacco.
Nearby are such palatial thoroughbred breeding establishments as Gainsborough Farm, belonging to Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al Maktoum from the ruling family of the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, and Lanes End Farm, property of Will Farish, U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.
By everyman standards, Reineman and Charlie Nuckols and Nucks are men of means. But by no means do their fortunes rival those of Sheikh Maktoum and Farish. When the sheikh and Farish think about breeding horses, money is no object. When the Nuckols father and son start lining up suitors for Reineman’s mares, they count the costs.
“You have to know how much money you want to put into stud fees,” said Charlie. “Then you’ve got to know the conformation of the stallion, the conformation of the mare, their pedigrees and their race records.”
According to Nucks, Reineman splurges “every now and then–he paid $60,000 to breed Pulpit.”
But a typical venture was the date that sent Reineman’s mare, Sweetest Lady, to Claiborne Farm in the winter of 1999 for a $10,000 rendezvous with Our Emblem.
Like his older full-brother, Miner’s Mark, Our Emblem was royally bred and was part of the wealthy Phipps family’s equine empire. Their father, Mr. Prospector, stands alongside Northern Dancer as one of the finest stallions of the 20th Century and their aristocratic mother, Personal Ensign, ended her brilliant undefeated career on the racetrack by scoring her 12th consecutive victory in the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
However, on the racetrack, neither Miner’s Mark nor Our Emblem lived up to the expectations engendered by their bloodlines. Miner’s Mark managed to win a Grade I race, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, and earn $967,170, but he wound up with a modest six victories in 18 starts. Our Emblem went to the winner’s circle in five of his 27 races and made $366,013 but failed to record a stakes victory.
“We had bred to Miner’s Mark,” said Charlie Nuckols. “We were disappointed in how his get [offspring] were racing and selling. They were plodders. Our Emblem had more speed than Miner’s Mark. He was a miler and milers generally make good stud horses.
“There’s no better bred horse in the world than Our Emblem, and I said to myself: `Something good has to come out of this family sometime.’ He was a complete outcross (different strain of the breed) to Sweetest Lady. They both were medium-sized horses. They had good bones and feet. Their legs were on straight, true and correct. I thought: `If you mate those two together, you’ll probably get a straight and true individual.'”
Sweetest Lady had a respectable but not particularly noteworthy racing career, but she was endowed with a cosmopolitan pedigree. Her father, Lord At War, was a champion in his native Argentina and a grandson of the outstanding English champion Brigadier Gerard.
“Sweetest Lady was a winner of high class allowance races and we knew the family well,” said Nucks. “She was foaled here and her dam (Sweetest Roman) was foaled here.”
At 6:10 p.m. on Feb. 20, 1999, Sweetest Lady gave birth to the son of Our Emblem in the 19-stall foaling barn on Nuckols Farm that Charlie calls “the maternity ward.”
“He came one day early,” remembered Nucks. “He was a good-looking foal.”
Other than “a squeaky clean bill of health,” neither Charlie nor Nucks remembers anything extraordinary about War Emblem during the 21 months he spent on their farm.
“According to all of his records, he never was sick a day the whole time he was here,” said Nucks. “We never had a bit of trouble with him.We cannot find a time he was sick or misbehaved or was hurt. That’s rare. He wasn’t the fastest colt in the field, but we don’t pay much attention to that.”
Reineman tried to sell War Emblem at Keeneland’s 2000 September yearling sale but when the bidding stopped at $19,000 he had his trainer, Frank Springer, buy back the colt for $20,000.
War Emblem was returned to Nuckols Farm and stayed there until early November 2000 when he was loaded onto a van with other yearlings and taken to Webb Caroll’s training center at Saint Matthews, S.C., to be broken and readied for his racing career.
The reports that the father and son on Nuckols Farm received from Carroll suggested that this was a very promising colt but one “with an attitude.”
Charlie wasn’t surprised by the change in deportment. “Put them in a stall for 23 hours a day and start cranking on them and they change their personalities a little bit,” he suggested.
It also came as no surprise to father and son that Reineman decided to accept an offer of $900,000 to sell a 90 percent interest in War Emblem to the Thoroughbred Corp., the holding company headed by Prince Ahmed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the week after the colt scored his runaway victory in the April 6 Illinois Derby at Sportsman’s Park. “Mr. Reineman has so many horses,” said Nucks. “It was a business decision for him.”
Unfortunately for Reineman and the Nuckols, if War Emblem is able to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, Sweetest Lady’s sudden rise to world renown as a broodmare won’t bring them a financial windfall.
“She died last year after foaling a colt by Distorted Humor,” lamented Nucks. The colt died a month later.
