’s Epic Derby Victory is Ten Years Old

By Bill Heller

Can it be ten years since a three-year-old gelding named Funny Cide, and a yellow school bus carrying a group of high school friends who owned him, rearranged the racing industry’s position on New York-breds? “I don’t believe it,” his retired Hall of Fame Jose Santos said Tuesday. “It went by too fast.” Asked what’s the first thing that comes to his mind when someone asks him about Funny Cide, Santos said, “That he was the best three-year-old in my racing career.” These days, Jose has a new career running a feed company, Instride International, which began operating in 2012 and now serves three Florida tracks: Calder, and Palm Meadows. “Basically, I’m running the whole thing,” Jose said. “I’ve been selling to the trainers. They are friends of mine.” His client list includes a bunch of New York trainers who winter in Florida, including , John Kimmel, Linda Rice, Rick Violette and John Terranova. Funny Cide, a son of out of Belle’s Good Cide by , was bred by WinStar Farm and foaled at Joe and Anne McMahon’s farm just outside . He was originally purchased for $22,000 before trainer purchased him for $75,000 for , an entity formed when several old friends enjoyed a Memorial Day barbecue in their home town, Sackets Harbor. Jack Knowlton was the managing partner. Funny Cide didn’t enter the 2003 Derby as an afterthought. He had finished a very strong second to Derby favorite in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct. While seemed to have Empire Maker on cruise control, Funny Cide came at him again before the wire and galloped out so strongly that his connections believed they had a legitimate shot in the Run for the Roses. He was seeking to become the first New York-bred to win the and the first gelding to do so since in 1929. Neither Jose nor Barclay had ever won the Derby. But there was a lot of good feeling at the time for a surging New York-bred program, partly as a result of a super ad conceived by Joe Spadaro, Deputy Executive Director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund, with the tag line “Get with the Program - New York-breds.” Singer and Thoroughbred owner David Cassidy did the first television ad using the line, followed by a couple of members of the hit TV series “The Sopranos.” An ad using Jose’s nine-year-old son Jose Jr. was filmed, but was never used due to possible negative repercussions. Still, Jose Sr. was aware of it and appreciated it. Joe ran into Jose the morning before the Derby in the track kitchen at . He wished Jose good luck and told him, “The entire New York-bred program is rooting for you.” Joe watched the Derby on TV at Aqueduct the following afternoon. “I started going crazy when he made his run,” Joe said. “I was just beside myself. I went nuts.” Who could blame him? If you truly loved New York racing, how could you not feel good when a New York-bred won the Kentucky Derby? But it got even better. When a on horseback reached Jose galloping out Funny Cide, the first thing Jose said was, “Get with the Program - New York-breds.” To this very day, Jose says, “I have no idea where that came from.” It didn’t matter. “I didn’t come down for days,” Spadaro said. “If I’d been working on Madison Avenue, I could have retired.” Incredible events followed Funny Cide’s Derby victory. Jose would be falsely accused of using a buzzer and be immediately exonerated. Funny Cide would devastate his opposition in the , then finish third to Empire Maker on a sloppy track in the , failing to become the first Triple Crown winner since in 1978. But Funny Cide would come back and win the Grade I , one of a handful of recent Kentucky Derby winners to win a graded stakes after their three-year-old season. What will Jose remember? “A lot of good times,” he said. “Memories that will last a lifetime.”