When Red Knight crossed the wire first Sept. 10 at Kentucky Downs in the $694,180 Kentucky Turf Cup Stakes (G2T) to gain a berth in the Longines Breeders' Cup Turf (G1T), it was the biggest win yet for small-time breeder and owner Tom Egan. After an 11-month layoff, the horse is 2-for-2 in 2022 with earnings of $407,180 for trainer Mike Maker, who replaced Hall of Famer Bill Mott.
From a love of Thoroughbred racing that was born out of parents who had dual interests in gambling and horses, Egan spent 20-odd years sharing his passion with his wife, Jaye. When Jaye passed in 2017 following a battle with breast cancer, Egan says that racing lost some of its luster. However, the 8-year-old gelding affectionately dubbed 'Red' will do his best to give Egan the final run that he deserves.
MarketWatch: Tell us how you found your way to Thoroughbreds.
Tom Egan: My father was a gambler, had been for a long time, and my mother was the athlete. She had four brothers, so she was kind of a tomboy. She taught me how to play baseball, golf, and how to ride horses. She was the equestrian. The mixture of the two came up with me. I didn't even start going to the races until 1971, when we went to Suffolk Downs and Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire. The next year I said, 'I want to see the good horses.' So I started going to Belmont Park and Saratoga .
I went to work for Phipps Stable and I started as a hot walker and then became a groom and worked for a couple of trainers in New York...I made the mistake of going to law school. I'm a recovering attorney. I've kind of just stopped, it's been 40 years or some number.
MW: How did you begin breeding horses/establish Trinity Farm?
TE: I lived in Connecticut until 2005 and so did my wife, she was born and raised in Connecticut. Her name was Jaye. Trinity Farm is a paper farm. If you went out our front door and walked straight across the road you'd be at (our partners') front door. They were our original partners but out our back door was the 250-year-old Trinity Church. So we figured we'd keep it in the neighborhood and name it Trinity Farm.
(Jaye) was an avid, avid fan of all aspects of the sport. When we first bought Isabel Away, which was in the '03 Keeneland Sale, we went to the races the next spring, and on the third day that we were there we saw a trainer and he said, 'Well, 95% of the people get into it as owners just to be recognized and to be seen and they don't really like horse racing.' My wife cut him off short and said, 'We've been here three days, we don't know anybody, we haven't had a seat, but Tom and I have had a glorious time.' That's the way she was. The first time I took her to Saratoga in the summer of 1990, you always wonder what are they going to think of all this? She just loved it.
MW: Isabel Away has been a foundation mare for you. Who are some of the horses that have come from her?
TE: Isabel Away is the dam of Red Knight and she also produced a horse by the name of Macagone. He was a terrific horse in his own right. He was a miler whereas Red has won at two miles. But Macagone was a very good miler. He won the Danger's Hour Stakes in New York twice (2016, 2017). He won the Artie Schiller Stakes, which is cool because he's sired by Artie Schiller. He won that in November of 2016. All in all he beat some damn good horses. He set the inner turf course record (1:33.13 for a mile) at Saratoga in 2019. Red Knight had a full brother, Birchwood Road, who made a quarter of a million dollars, which was good but not like Macagone.
The sad note is that Red also had a year younger brother whose name was Jaye Jaye. He was trained by Bill Mott. All of Bill Mott's first-time starting 3-year-olds go off at 20-1 because he doesn't really push them. Jaye Jaye won by (2 1/2) lengths and usually the jockey shakes your hand and leaves, which is what Jose (Ortiz) did, but then he came back to us and talked about Jaye Jaye for five minutes.
My buddy who loves Red Knight asked him 'What about Red Knight?' And he just dismissively waved his hand and said, 'Oh, he'll win stakes,' but he just wanted to talk about Jaye Jaye. He was clearly the best horse that we ever bred. He won his next start on the dirt and then he died in a paddock accident in Ocala in January of 2018.
MW: What went behind your decision to breed to Pure Prize (sire of Birchwood Road and Red Knight)?
TE: Since Pure Prize, Red's sire, was a Phipps horse, that always made me feel closer to him because that's who I first went to work for at the racetrack. I went to see him at the farm and his front legs were a little pretzel-like. They weren't perfectly conformed. You're never supposed to criticize a stallion out loud but I actually did...Then I said, 'Let's look at the rest of his body,' and he had a spectacular body. What I do is try to find a body that fits Isabel Away's body. I thought he fit perfectly. He's sired by Storm Cat out of a Phipps line mare and particularly his dam, Heavenly Prize, was a champion. There's not a whole lot more pedigree-wise you can say about him.
The problem was that Isabel Away was mean, unwilling to train sometimes, vicious, kind of a total wack job. Storm Cat himself was a wack job. So I'm thinking this isn't too good to breed a son of Storm Cat to Isabel Away, but fortunately at the time I lived 16 miles from Payson Park and we used to go there frequently and then I knew that Carole Williams was the exercise rider for Pure Prize when she worked for Phipps Stable in Florida.
Carole and her husband became very good friends with Jaye and I and we would invite them to the house for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. In talking with her, she told me that Pure Prize had none of the characteristics of a Storm Cat, such as a wacky disposition, breathing problem, or bad and sore knees. That he was not like that at all. It was very influential in my deciding to breed to him...I bred to him four times. Two died at birth and then Birchwood Road, and Red.
MW: Red Knight has had several long-term layoffs from the track. Did you ever think that his career was over?
TE: He came to Florida in February of 2020 to Chad Stewart's farm. We were already very familiar with him because he had broken and trained the young guy, Jaye Jaye. Chad's very good, he has a hundred horses at his farm. He's a very nice person and he's an equally adept trainer. His wife is a veterinarian. Red wound up at their farm and I knew something was wrong with him and I wasn't quite sure what. In two days, Chad says, 'He's got pneumonia.' So we got him over to the hospital, Peterson Smith, and Dr. Clark attended to Red.
She called me and said, 'Tom, there's a 10% chance this horse will die, and after that it's 50-50 if he'll ever race again. That's why Red had a 231-day layoff until he ran at Kentucky Downs the first time in September of 2020. He finished second in that race and it was a tremendous performance after that layoff. Then it was back to Chad's farm in September of 2021 because he was drained emotionally, mentally, and physically. Chad wasn't particularly rosy in the outlook right away that he'd ever make it anywhere. But we got him back in training and he did; he likes it.
I can read Red. I remember when he won the Allen Jerkens Stakes in December 2018, I went up to Payson Park. And I always go up in the morning, but I went in the afternoon and he was in his stall and he just looked at me like 'I know I'm running tomorrow and I'm ready.' And he was...When he doesn't run, there's a reason. It's not his competitiveness because he loves his job.
MW: What are the plans for Red? What is next for you?
TE: Mike Maker is going to have a lot of input into this, but we'll either run in the Sycamore Stakes (G3) on Oct. 14 at Keeneland or at Keeneland on Nov. 5.
My hope is that (my dear friend) Laura Fonde, who is a very good hunter-jumper rider, can make a jumper out of him and he can have a good life. He's a little bit like my wife, Jaye. He's very social and bubbling and happy and wants to do this and see this and that. He clearly does not seem like a horse that wants to be turned out in a pasture. He loves human attention.
Altogether (Jaye and I) have had 14 Thoroughbreds. When my wife died (in 2017), there's an old expression 'shared joy is greater joy.' And without her, it became very different to the extent that...my wife was just very pretty, bubbling personality, she knew everybody and everybody knew her. That's just the way she was. In her eulogy I said, 'Jaye could make a rainy Sunday afternoon fun by merely going to Home Depot.' That's what she had. She had that ability to do that. Racing just lost a lot of its luster. With the death of Jaye Jaye and Isabel Way; we had a very nice run for 20 years and I think that's it. Everything comes to an end.
