Longtime friends share a moment at the top
Block News Alliance
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After his colt, Always Dreaming, charged to the biggest victory margin in the Kentucky Derby since 2011, beating longshot Lookin At Lee by 2¾ lengths and Battle of Midway by better than seven, co-owner Anthony Bonomo couldn’t stop looking at the television monitors during the postrace news conference.
He felt like he was watching a dream.
You might not believe this, but I can testify to it, the race Bonomo watched was the race he described the previous morning, under a steady rain at Churchill Downs in the backside media center, in his thick Brooklyn accent.
He said his horse would break quickly, move to the lead, and stay there. He said when the horses moved to challenge him in the stretch, jockey Pat Velazquez would ask him for another gear.
“He wins by 2-3 [lengths],” Bonomo said. “More if he’s really good, and the track is right.”
From his mouth to the ears of 158,040 in attendance at Churchill Downs for Saturday’s 143rd running of the Derby. All week analysts talked about Always Dreaming being too eager, too aggressive in training.
“What they said was acting up, I saw as fired up,” Bonomo said.
Bonomo and lifelong friend Vincent Viola, the billionaire owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team and President Donald Trump’s original nominee to be Secretary of the Army, joined their racing operations to form Brooklyn Boyz Stable, along with their wives. After winning the Kentucky Derby, they shared more emotion than one room could contain. Viola is a military man, West Point graduate, and business mastermind. Bonomo is a New York attorney, street smart and quick witted.
“I thought he was everything I wasn’t,” Bonomo said of Viola. “He’s always been a champion kind of person,” Viola said of Bonomo. “Bigger than life.”
These guys fell in love with horse racing at Aqueduct race course as children.
“Anthony and I, I think, represent everybody who went to the racetrack for the first time with their dads and were just astonished by the brilliance of these equine athletes,” Viola said. “And never fell out of love with the sport. And we have to say, really, we are two kids, still, in our hearts, from Brooklyn, N.Y., Williamsburg section, who always dreamed.”
For Bonomo, the colt truly was a family effort. His son bought the horse. His son’s name?
“It’s Anthony,” Bonomo said. “You know us Italians. We just name our kids after ourselves. You call one name and everybody comes to dinner.”
Anthony gave his son a spending limit. Anthony Jr. blew through it, by a considerable margin, to purchase the son of Bodemeister at the 2015 September Keeneland Yearling Sale for $350,000.
“I was on the phone with him,” the father said. “Boy, I was hot.”
On Saturday, the father’s reaction: “I really love you, son.”
And this is how it goes with the Brooklyn Boyz, one story after another. Bonomo talks about a lunch they had in Brooklyn before coming to Louisville where half their neighborhood shows up. They must all have his cell phone number. Many have never had much interaction with a horse outside of a betting window, but all had advice on what to feed the horse, when, how much.
“Everybody’s an expert,” he said. “But I love it.”
After the race, Bonomo said, “I didn’t know your phone could store 267 messages. I’m trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to return all these. But I begged Vinny on the way over to have a party at a restaurant [in Brooklyn] that he is paying for. So all these messages, maybe we can return them in person. That’s what our neighborhood is all about. They carry you in times like this that are great. But more importantly, when they are not as great is when you really know the value that your friends are friends forever.”
The colt was named by Bonomo’s wife, Mary Ellen, who said, “I’ve always daydreamed. I probably daydream a little too much. So I thought why don’t we just name it Dreaming. Everybody dreams of something, whether it’s a big event or a special day or the birth of a child or winning the Kentucky Derby.”
Bonomo, in the span of eight hours, decided to get into horse racing and took out an owner’s license while at Saratoga with his wife about a decade ago. Viola has been involved in bigtime sports for a while, but when asked where the Derby ranks, said, “Someone asked me is this the greatest feeling you’ve ever had? And I said yes — outside of the birth of my children and meeting my wife.”
Pletcher scored his second Derby win as a trainer. Velasquez scored his second as a jockey. And the Brooklyn Boyz demonstrated that, yet again, on the First Saturday in May, dreams really can come true.