Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Sackatoga partners buckle up
ELMONT, N.Y. – Jack Knowlton and a few dozen friends and family will be in upstate New York on Saturday, eating meatballs and Italian food at Pennell’s, a popular restaurant a few furlongs from Saratoga Race Course. In Southern California, Lew Titterton will be with family, cracking open lobsters he will have flown in from the East Coast.
For two of the principal partners in Sackatoga Stable, a global pandemic may keep them apart but it won’t keep them from partying while they watch from afar as their New Yorkbred Tiz the Law competes in Saturday’s $1 million Belmont Stakes, a race to be run without fans or owners in attendance.
“There is always a Sackatoga party in some way, shape, or form,” Knowlton said.
Seventeen years ago, Knowlton, Titterton, and eight other partners in Sackatoga partied on yellow school buses in Louisville, Baltimore, and Long Island as Funny Cide, a New York-bred gelding, won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness before finishing third in the Belmont Stakes.
It seemed like a once-in-alifetime experience for a partnership that typically buys one or two New York-breds a year at relatively modest prices. Remarkably, Sackatoga, which has now expanded to several dozen partners, is in the limelight again with Tiz the Law, also a New York-bred who could take them on another Triple Crown experience.
“To have it happen again, I still wake up and pinch myself and say it looks like lightning really has struck twice,” Knowlton said on a national conference call this week.
It wasn’t lightning but rain that Knowlton and Titterton believe was Funny Cide’s undoing in the 2003 Belmont, in which he finished third to Empire Maker.
“The longer the day went, the harder it rained,” Knowlton recalled. “I’ll go to my grave wondering what might have happened had we not had a rainstorm and had a fast track that day, because Funny Cide was doing so well at that point. However, Empire Maker was a tremendous horse and no surprise he relished a mile and a half, but that was a day it started raining.”
Funny Cide would go on to win six more races – including the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup in 2004 – before retiring in the summer of 2007. He resides at the Kentucky Horse Park outside Lexington, Ky.
Barclay Tagg, Sackatoga’s trainer since the late 1990s, picked out Funny Cide, electing to take a chance on a new sire, Distorted Humor. Tagg used that same philosophy in selecting Tiz the Law from the first crop of Constitution. Funny Cide went for $75,000. Tiz the Law sold for $110,000.
“Getting the first [crop] of a brand-new stallion is sort of an interesting way to do it because you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Titterton said. “But if you get a guy like Barclay, who can really pick horses, it sort of gives you an edge. This is twice in his career that he’s done that, and that’s pretty impressive.”
In between Funny Cide and Tiz the Law, there were only a couple of Sackatoga horses that showed stakes-level talent. In 2009, Seattle Mission, a son of Strategic Mission, won his maiden at first asking at Saratoga – beating Drosselmeyer, the 2010 Belmont Stakes winner. Unfortunately, Seattle Mission came out of his win with an injury and went 1 for 10 the remainder of his career.
In 2009, Doc N Roll, a New York-bred by Wheelaway, won a New York Stallion Stakes race. Currently, Sackatoga owns Niko’s Dream, a daughter of Central Banker who recently won an open-company allowance at Gulfstream Park and is likely to run in the Mount Vernon on July 2.
Knowlton said he remembered coming out to Saratoga one morning last summer to watch Tiz the Law breeze before his first race.
“What impressed me the most was the way he galloped out – the rider just couldn’t pull him up,” Knowlton said. “We thought he was going to be a winner first time out and he did that in Saratoga and ran the highest Beyer Speed Figure of any 2-year-old at the Saratoga meet.”
Tiz the Law developed a splint bone injury shortly after that race. Tagg still was able to have him ready for the Grade 1 Champagne, a race he won by four lengths in October.
After skipping the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Tiz the Law finished his 2-year-old season with a three-quarterlength loss in the Kentucky Jockey Club, run in the slop at Churchill Downs, a result that probably cost him a chance at an Eclipse Award.
In two starts this year, both at Gulfstream Park, Tiz the Law won the Grade 3 Holy Bull and the Grade 1 Florida Derby to stamp him as among the top of his generation.
The Florida Derby seemed to have Tiz the Law ready for a big race at the Kentucky Derby when it was scheduled for May 2. But the impact of coronavirus has caused the revamping of the Triple Crown, with the Kentucky Derby now Sept. 5 and the Preakness on Oct. 3.
At one point, the Belmont looked like it could bring many of the top horses together. But Charlatan and Nadal, both trained by Bob Baffert, were injured and Maxfield’s connections had opted for the Blue Grass before an injury prevented him from making that race.
Now, Tiz the Law will be a heavy favorite in a field of 10 for the Belmont at 1 1/8 miles around one turn. Manny Franco will ride him.
“I think the configuration with a long run down the backside, Manny is going to have the opportunity to put him where he wants to put him and be able to make the run that he’s made in all four of his wins, kind of stalking coming from a little bit off the pace and then moving forward around the turn and winning the race in the stretch,” Knowlton said.
And won’t that get the party started.