What are 10 middle-class guys doing in a place like this?
Going into Saturday’s 135th running of the Belmont Stakes, they are standing on the threshold of becoming the owners of the 12th thoroughbred in American racing history to win the Triple Crown.
Never in their wildest flights of fancy did they think they’d be in that position when they shelled out $75,000 to buy a 2-year-old New York-bred gelding named Funny Cide. In theory, it is fit and proper for them to be here. After all, stories like this are what the American dream is made of.
In practice, everybody who’s anybody in the racing establishment knows that members of the middle class don’t belong in the winner’s circle after classic races like the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.
At this level they are competing against the likes of:
– Prince Khalid Abdullah of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, who yearly rolls the world’s best-bred horses off his Juddmonte Farms’ assembly lines.
– The Maktoum brothers of the United Arab emirate Dubai, who have invested in excess of $2 billion in thoroughbreds during the last 27 years.
– Nelson Bunker Hunt, who failed in an attempt to corner the world’s silver market.
– Ogden Mills Phipps, whose family fortune goes back to the 19th Century.
– Frank Stronach, the Canadian billionaire whose collection of American racetracks is starting to rival Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection.
Sure, there are thoroughbred owners who’ve started from scratch and made it to the top of the racing game. People such as Stronach, the late Allen Paulson and Bob and Beverly Lewis.
The difference is that they made their riches before making their marks in racing, whereas the 10 members of Sackatoga Stable are members of the middle class and are expected to remain there for the rest of their lives. Like Funny Cide, who is attempting to become the first gelding to win the Triple Crown, they are an anomaly.
Prince Abdullah, owner of Empire Maker, who is returning to the Triple Crown trail after running second as the favorite in the Kentucky Derby, is the semi-retired president of a massive international conglomerate and has residences in Saudi Arabia; London, Newmarket and Kent in England; and in Lexington, Ky.
One of Funny Cide’s co-owners, Mark Phillips, also is semi-retired. After retiring as a math teacher in his native Sackets Harbor, N.Y., he has stayed active as a high school baseball umpire.
Another co-owner, Jon Constance, never was a prince, but the Sackets Harbor optician once was a member of the ruling class; in March he concluded a four-year term as mayor of the village that at last count had 1,386 residents.
Jackson Knowlton is Sackatoga Stable’s managing partner and one of the six founding fathers of the venture that was born during a 1995 Memorial Day picnic at one of their homes in the village on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, an hour north of Syracuse. It was a get-together of boyhood friends who’d grown up in Sackets Harbor and had gone to grade and high school at Sackets Harbor Central.
Knowlton had left to go to college at Ithaca and since 1984 had lived in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where he has a small health care consulting firm and his wife, Dorothy, owns a small shoe store. Saratoga Springs is the site of Saratoga, which every summer boasts the highest-class thoroughbred meeting in America. It also is the site of a lower level standardbred track, now known as Saratoga Equine Sports Center, and that’s where Knowlton got his start as a horse owner with a group known as The Breakfast Club Stable.
“We had four to six people and we threw in a few bucks and had anywhere from one to five horses racing at a given time,” Knowlton said. “We had about 30 harness horses, and I learned a little about being a managing partner before we ended that in 1993.”
All along, Knowlton had been an avid thoroughbred racing fan who spent almost all of his afternoons at the track during Saratoga’s six-week meeting. At the Memorial Day get-together the subject of thoroughbred racing came up and it was suggested: “Why don’t we each throw in $5,000 and buy a thoroughbred?”
At first, some of the group regarded it as a get-poor-quick scheme. But the prospect of having some fun with a horse won out over the risk aspect. Six of the high school friends agreed to form Sackatoga Stable. The name Sackatoga was a hybrid of the hamlet where they were raised and Saratoga, and their high school colors, maroon and gray, were selected as the colors of their stable.
Their first acquisition was a $22,000 New York-bred. They called him Sacket’s Six, and Tim Kelly was his trainer. Racing for the partners from age 3 through 6, Sacket’s Six earned a modest $111,730 before being sold privately.
One thoroughbred led to another and another. A couple of the original partners dropped out, but other friends reinforced the ownership nucleus. Four years ago Knowltown hired Barclay Tagg to replace Kelly as Sackatoga Stable’s trainer.
The ante was upped from the original $5,000, but the goals remained modest and realistic.
“Our goal was to buy a New York-bred in a price range up to $75,000,” Knowlton said. “We felt that strategy might find us a New York-bred who could run in some of the nice stakes races [restricted to New York-breds] so we’d break even. When you spend between $50,000 and $75,000 for a New York-bred you’re in the relatively upper echelon of New York-breds, but we never went into this with any kind of assumption that we’d make money. We also wanted to win a race at Saratoga, which we still haven’t done.
“At the level we’re playing at we predominantly look at 2-year-olds in training, and it’s the best available athlete. We’ve had fillies, colts and geldings. It really doesn’t matter. We’re not buying horses with the expectation that they will be champions.”
The capital that enabled Sackatoga Stable to buy Funny Cide was supplied by a mare named Bail Money. She was acquired for $40,000 and earned $108,665 for Sackatoga Stable in 2002 before being plucked out of a claiming race for $62,500.
En route to racing at Gulfstream Park that winter, Tagg had made his routine stop at Tony Everard’s training center near Ocala, Fla., and Funny Cide had caught his eye and that of his assistant and girlfriend, Robin Smullen. At first, the price was $40,000, but Tagg didn’t have any clients who were interested. By March the price had gone up to $75,000, but Sackatoga Stable’s coffers were $62,500 richer because Bail Money had been claimed.
The gelding fit the New York-bred profile and Knowltown told Tagg: “Go ahead and buy him.”
Thus, Funny Cide became the ninth horse to carry the maroon-and-gray colors of Sackatoga Stable.
“Funny Cide wasn’t a cheap horse, but we’re not millionaires,” said partner Dave Mahan, who owns a catering company in Watertown, Conn. “Everybody in the group really likes each other, and by pooling our money we can afford to buy a little better horse.”
Besides Funny Cide, Sackatoga Stable has a 3-year-old New York-bred filly, Wed in Dixie, and an unraced 2-year-old colt whose name is being changed to Lake Cide. The filly was purchased for $18,000, and the colt cost $60,000.
During his eight-race career, Funny Cide has earned $1,889,385. An encore performance in the Belmont will produce an additional $600,000 in purse money–plus a $5 million bonus jackpot that VISA is offering as a reward for the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978. In addition, he would earn a $20,000 bonus that is awarded to New York-bred winners of open stakes races.
Knowlton and his partners have “no regrets” that Funny Cide is a gelding and will have no residual value after his racing career is completed. “Breeding is a whole different game,” Knowlton said. “It’s enough of a challenge to manage a 10-person group just on the racing side.
“Even if he doesn’t win the Belmont, he has taken us places we never thought we’d be able to go. He already has won more than $1.8 million in purse money and there’s a whole lot more out there.
“We’re hoping and praying he stays sound. We could be enjoying this horse for another four, five or six years. He’s eligible for the Breeders’ Cup. If we can keep him going for a few years the potential is almost unlimited.”
The middle-class men who are partners in the three-horse Sackatoga Stable have no desire to join the sport’s social climbers by making megabucks purchases at the elite yearling sales.
“We’re not going to go crazy,” Knowltown said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We’re looking to have a four- or five-horse stable of New York-breds. We don’t have any intention of going beyond that. From the beginning we’ve been in this to have a good time and enjoy horse racing. We had an offer for Funny Cide after he won his first race by 14 3/4 lengths and it was very easy to say no.’
“We’ll stay with our original plan. We’re looking to pay in the $50,000-$75,000 range for thoroughbreds. Even if we had millions of dollars to invest there’s nothing that would tell me we’re ever going to find one as nice as this horse.”
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The Sackatoga Stable
The American Dream Team–Funny Cide’s 10 owners–with their percentage of shares.
OWNER HOMETOWN AGE PCT PROFESSION
Jackson Knowlton Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 55 20 Owns health-care
consulting firm
Dave Mahan Watertown, Conn. 55 20 Owns catering company
Gus Williams Delmar, N.Y. 77 20 Retired building
contractor
Lewis Titterton Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 58 10 Owns health-care
facilities
Eric Dattner New York 67 10 Retired mechanical
engineer
Harold Cring Sackets Harbor, N.Y. 54 4 Owns construction company
Jon Constance Sackets Harbor, N.Y. 54 4 Optician and former mayor
Mark Phillips Sackets Harbor, N.Y. 55 4 Retired math teacher; active
H.S. baseball umpire
Pete Phillips Sackets Harbor, N.Y. 59 4 Retired utility company
worker
Larry Reinhardt Sackets Harbor, N.Y. 56 4 Construction project
manager
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