Dr. Agne Gets It Done for Team Lady Eli

If you watch the replay of the sixth race at Saratoga Race Course July 11, you’ll start to hear some shrieking shortly after the field of 2-year-old maidens hits the quarter pole. The shrieking intensified as No. 3 Dr. Agne and Jose Ortiz first tried to find some room along the rail to move up from third place, and it reached a crescendo when the bay colt tipped outside, took the lead at the sixteenth pole, and hit the wire a length in front. The noise competing with Frank Mirahmadi’s call of the race was coming from a front-row box right on the finish line, and it was the sound of relief, of joy, of catharsis, of anxiety and grief and hope, and it was coming from trainer Cherie DeVaux, who spent the summer of 2015 caring for Dr. Agne’s dam at Belmont Park, willing the then-undefeated Lady Eli (by Divine Park) to survive a serious case of laminitis that she developed after stepping on a nail on her way back to trainer Chad Brown’s barn after she won the Belmont Oaks Invitational Stakes (G1T). Then Brown’s long-time Belmont assistant, DeVaux became a racing household name because of her relationship with the filly, as did Dr. Bryan Fraley, an equine podiatrist, and Dr. Robert Agne, a veterinarian at Saratoga’s Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital. Lady Eli’s story had a happy ending: she not only recovered, but she returned to the races, winning four more graded stakes races, three of them grade 1, before being retired in early 2018 and selling for $4.2 million at that year’s Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, in foal to War Front. Lady Eli had returned to the races at Saratoga Aug. 27, 2016, finishing second by less than a length in the Ballston Spa Stakes (G2T), a triumph by nearly any measure. But missing from her cheering section that day was Dr. Agne, who had been struck and killed while bicycling in Vermont in September 2015. Agne didn’t get to see Lady Eli return to the winner’s circle, and he didn’t see her win an Eclipse Award in 2017 for champion turf female. On Friday at Saratoga, Agne’s widow Carrie shared a box with DeVaux to watch her late husband’s namesake make his first start. “It was just incredible,” she said, standing in the winner’s circle, emotion evident on her face and in her voice. “I knew from Cherie that they had high hopes for him, and we just cheered him on. No matter how he did, we were going to be happy for him.” Dr. Agne, by Into Mischief, was purchased as a yearling for $185,000 by Eddie Woods’ Quarter Pole Enterprises. DeVaux’s Belladonna Racing partnership along with Sol Kumin’s Madaket Stables tried to buy him privately shortly thereafter. “The price was outrageous,” Kumin said. “We’d seen him at the sale and kept our eye on him, but we couldn’t get it done.” A superficial cut kept him out of the 2-year-old sales, and when David Ingordo, DeVaux’s husband and Belladonna’s manager, went back to Woods, they were able to make the deal, partnering with Madaket and with Twin Brook Stables. Kumin was also a part owner of Lady Eli, so when DeVaux asked if she could name the colt for Dr. Agne, the answer was a quick and unequivocal “yes.” The owner of Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm, John Sikura, had owned an interest in Lady Eli, and he consigned her at that 2018 sale. He also ended up buying her. “She was a special race mare,” Sikura said. “We prefer owning American dirt mares, but Lady Eli is a rare exception. She was a fabulous talent with great courage, and a top-class mare for three years. In today’s market, I’d think that her offspring will have interest from all over the world, given how important turf racing is outside of America.” In the paddock before the race, DeVaux expressed disappointment that the race had been taken off the turf following one of Saratoga’s trademark thunder/hailstorms the evening before, but she elected to keep Dr. Agne in because he’d been training so well on dirt. But despite the win, she’ll point the colt back to a turf race for his next start. “I feel like that’s going to be his preferred surface,” she said. “He showed a lot against other turf horses, and he’s got a lot of works under him. He’s very professional and precocious, and I think that that’s what got him the win.” “Whatever he is on the dirt,” Sikura said, “I think he’ll be even better on the turf. He was very professional yesterday. He was inside behind horses, and getting a race under his belt, getting that experience, takes some of the pressure off when he runs back.” After getting her picture taken in the winner’s circle, Carrie Agne walked over to the colt, bending her head to his nose and cradling his head in her hands, oblivious to the commotion around her. She had met him only that morning at DeVaux’s barn, but the attachment was deep and profound, a perfect moment amid still powerful grief. “My husband loved racing,” she said. “He loved everything about horses, and he just gave his all.” And on a Friday afternoon at Saratoga, so did his namesake.