He was the quintessential Mid-Atlantic horse and one of its greatest in the modern Thoroughbred era.
Funny Cide, the “Gutsy Gelding,” who became the first and only New York-bred to win the Kentucky Derby, died last month from complication of colic. He was 23.
Owned by a group of high school friends who arrived in Kentucky in May 2003 in a yellow school bus, Funny Cide stunned the horse-racing world by winning the Derby in an upset over one of Kentucky’s finest, the aptly named Empire Maker. Two weeks later, Funny Cide scored an almost 10-length victory in the Preakness.
It was a surreal moment in an already fantastical journey, founding member of Sackatoga Stables, Jack Knowlton, said recently from his home office in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Because just around the corner — on Funny Cide’s home track and in front of an adoring fan base — was the Belmont Stakes, which would give him the Mount Everest of racing: The Triple Crown.
It was not to be as Funny Cide finished third. Knowlton said he still believes Funny Cide would have won if five inches of rain hadn’t fallen that day. “It was a mess,” Knowlton said. “He was rank and just hated the track.”
Despite the disappointment, Knowlton said that day at Belmont was electric. “One hundred thousand people cheering him in the rain; it was incredible.”
Several monikers have been attached to the very modestly bred gelding, but the common thread is he’s the “everyman” horse, in the same narrative vein as Hall of Famers Seabiscuit and John Henry — a horse of little means makes good and becomes the people’s champion because it exhibits traits on the racetrack humans admire: fortitude, courage and will … guts.
But to view Funny Cide solely through the lens of his glittering racing career, as a wonderful anomaly who captured the horse racing world’s imagination for one special summer, is to deny full recognition of his impact on the Thoroughbred world.
Funny Cide was from the first crop of Distorted Humor, whose stud fee doubled after Funny Cide’s Triple Crown campaign. It also, more importantly, demonstrated Distorted Humor could produce runners from any type of mare since the dam of Funny Cide was an Oklahoma-bred with minimal success on the track and not much of a pedigree. Distorted Humor went on to sire champions and command a stud fee of $300,000 at the peak of his career as stallion.
Sackatoga Stables was the first ownership group of its kind and went from a group of friends who just wanted to win any race at their home track of Saratoga to a large syndicate with some 90-100 owners.
Funny Cide’s jockey, Jose Santos, punched his ticket to the Hall of Fame with Funny Cide’s classic wins, which also launched trainer Barclay Tagg’s career that has included a second Sackatoga horse, champion Tiz The Law.
“No doubt he put a lot of people on the map,” Knowlton said.
After earning $3.5 million on the track, Funny Cide was retired to the Kentucky Horse Park in 2008, where he became the most visited horse in the park’s Hall of Champions and occupied the same stall where Forego and Cigar were before him.
