Jack Knowlton looks back on Sackatoga Stable history

Jack Knowlton stood on the main track at Keeneland awaiting the return of Tiz Dashing, a 4-year-old colt by Tiz the Law that ran in the Grade 1, $650,000 Maker’s Mark Mile Stakes on April 10.

Tiz Dashing ran last but beaten by less than four lengths in the race that Knowlton called a Breeders’ Cup-caliber race. The 12-horse field, reduced by five scratches, included four Grade 1 winners and multiple graded stakes winners in the United States and overseas. The winner, Zulu Kingdom, was coming off four consecutive graded stakes wins, including a Grade 1.

“He certainly didn’t embarrass himself,” said Knowlton, the co-founder and operating manager of Sackatoga Stable based in Saratoga Springs.

“You don’t always get a chance to run a horse in a Grade 1,” said Knowlton. “You will see some of these horses in the Breeders’ Cup.”

Tiz Dashing, a $215,000 purchase by Sackatoga, is 12-3-2-3 with $414,292 in earnings. Knowlton said he likely will be pointed to the Poker Stakes (G3) this summer where the horse will hold a much stronger hand.

“No regrets,” Knowlton said after the Maker’s Mark. “You gotta take a shot.”

Knowlton took a shot 30 years ago, when he co-founded Sackatoga with Ed Mitzen in 1995. From 2000, when Equibase started tracking ownership winnings, the stable’s horses have earned just more than $10 million.

Sackatoga claims its name from combining Sackets Harbor, New York, where Knowlton grew up, and Saratoga Springs, where he has lived with his wife Dorothy for several years.

“Let’s buy a horse and win a race at Saratoga,” Knowlton said to five friends in 1995. “We won the Kentucky Derby before we won a race at Saratoga.”

The same year that Equibase started tracking stable winnings, a funny thing happened.

In 2000, a horse named Funny Cide was foaled. The New York-bred gelding who rose from humble roots and almost won the Triple Crown, won the hearts of horse enthusiasts and the public throughout the world.

Funny Cide won the hearts of Knowlton and his Sackatoga parters, too.

Rob Willis, supervisor of the Hall of Champions at the Kentucky Horse Park, cared for Funny Cide from 2017 until he died in 2023.

“(Go for) Gin and Funny Cide were one of the reasons I took this job,” said Willis, who played “Gin” in the Kentucky Derby.

“I call (Funny Cide) the horse park’s most popular resident,” Willis said.

To kick off the 2026 Derby Weekend, Kentucky Horse Park will unveil a statue of Funny Cide on April 30 at 10 a.m. EDT, preceded by a reception where videos and Funny Cide memorabilia will be displayed. Speakers will include Lee Carter, the Kentucky Horse Park executive director, Knowlton, Willis and Kathy Vespaziana, the park’s equine entertainment host and announcer. Equine sculptor Shelley Hunter created the Funny Cide statue. Hunter created several statues already on display at Kentucky Horse Park, including the bronze sculptures of Alysheba and John Henry located along the Memorial Walk of Champions. 

The Funny Cide likeness will be the seventh in the Hall of Champions that includes a replica of Go for Gin, a Willis favorite. Knowlton took the lead on getting the statue, Willis said.

Knowlton hosted a fundraiser at Siro’s restaurant during the Saratoga Race Course meet that raised $12,500. Another fundraiser was held at Finger Lakes Race Track where Funny Cide made his final start and won the H. Wadsworth Memorial Handicap Stakes on July 4, 2007 as the even-money favorite. The KEntucky Horse Park also hosted fundraising events, including a popular trail ride in remembrance of Funny Cide.

“He was a celebrity,” Willis said.

The story of Funny Cide and Sackatoga Stable was a memorable one for park patrons, Willis said.

“That's a wonderful place,” Knowlton said. “I go there almost every year because we'd been to the Derby every year after he won, and I'd go over, usually it would be on Sunday, and participate in one of the shows with people. It's so amazing the popularity that he had.”

But first things first, before the not-always-fun side of the Funny Cide story.

Knowlton grew up in Sackets Harbor, population 1,300, a village on Lake Ontario some 30 miles from the Canadian border. His mother was a schoolteacher and his dad a salesman. Knowlton earned a bachelor’s degree at Ithaca College in history and political science and a master’s degree in public administration and policy at the State University of New York at Albany where he lived with his wife Dorothy, a registered nurse. 

They were married the summer after he graduated from Ithaca college. The couple moved to Saratoga in 1984. Knowlton has spent his career consulting on healthcare issues in the New York State Assembly and now as president of Empire Health Advisors.

“I started the consulting business with a friend of mine, and through different iterations, I’ve been involved in healthcare consulting, and ended up with my own firm,” Knowlton said. “And that's become, instead of probably 80% or 90% of my time, now it's probably, you know, 20% to 30%. I am much more involved in horses. At this point, that's a lot more fun. But I've got a lot of, you know, quite a few clients that I've had for years in healthcare, and I like to continue to work with them as well.”

Knowlton and two co-workers in the assembly kicked in $500 a piece to buy a harness horse and called themselves the Breakfast Club Stable.

“It was one of those deals where the horse didn't even make the races,” Knowlton said. “That was a great start.”

But Knowlton did not stop taking a shot. 

The group kept on until it scored with a harness horse named Sunset Blue, who earned $270,356 and Saratoga Raceway’s 1993 horse of the year honors.

“We paid $30,000 for him,” Knowlton said. “But I finally decided to get out.”

Dorothy Knowlton’s family lived in Sackets Harbor, and the Knowlton’s would visit on Memorial Day for what Knowlton described as “bocce, beer, and barbecue” parties.

“Somebody said, “You know, why don't we buy a thoroughbred now that you're out of the harness business?’” Knowlton said.

Six friends chipped in $5,000 each. Trainer Tim Kelly, son of Hall of Fame trainer Tom Kelly, found a New York-bred for $22,000 that taught Knowlton more about the ups and downs of horse racing, Sacket’s Six.

The gelding broke his maiden at Belmont Park in his ninth start.

“He ran, he won a race, and he got hurt,” Knowlton. “We did surgery. He won another race. He got hurt again. We weren't going to do surgery, but Timmy said stall rest is all you need to do. 

“So, he came back and won again. We named him Sacket’s Six after the six of us. You know, Sackatoga after Saratoga and Sackets Harbor. And that's how we got started.”

Knowlton added four partners to raise money, and along came Funny Cide, who was foaled in 2000 and sold at the Fasig-Tipton New York 2001 preferred yearling sale at Saratoga for $22,000. 

“And we didn't buy him,” Knowlton said. “We bought another horse.” 

By then, Sackatoga had switched trainers to Barclay Tagg. Tagg always took his stable to winter in Florida. He told Knowlton that a friend had what he thought was a “pretty nice horse.”

“I know you guys from Sackatoga like New York breds,” Tagg told Knowlton. “You know if you're interested, I'd be willing to, you know, sell him to you.”

But the price for Funny Cide was $50,000.

“We didn't have $50,000,” Knowlton said.

Later the asking price jumped to $60,000, again a number outside of Sackatoga’s reach.

But Tagg trained a turf horse named Bail Money, and the owner didn’t want to take the filly to Florida, and Tagg told Knowlton the horse could win in Florida. 

Sackatoga paid $40,000 for Bail Money, and she offered just that. In a string of six races, the filly posted two wins and three seconds.

“All of a sudden, we had some money,” Knowlton said. 

Sackatoga paid $75,000 for the gelding Funny Cide. He went on to a 36: 11-6-8 record with career earnings of $3,529,412. Funny Cide received the Eclipse Award in 2003 for champion 3-year-old Colt.

The Sackatoga and Tagg team have endured. 

Tagg began training in 1972 and his horses have earned $67.5 million, including five individuals with earnings of more than $1 million. He has a winning percentage of 15.8%, Equibase data shows.

“Well, he's, you know, just the consummate old pro that does nothing 51 weeks a year but train horses,” Knowlton said about Tagg. “He's up at 4:30 every morning. He's over almost every evening to check on the horses — make sure that they're good. And (assistant trainer) Robin’s been with him right from the beginning since we joined him.”

Tagg and Robin Smullen were married in December, Knowlton said.

After Funny Cide won the Kentucky Derby, the news media put him and Sackatoga on the map permanently.

But the not-so-fun part of the Funny Cide story also involved the media.

“A reporter at the Miami Herald thought that, you know, Jose (Santos) had something in his hand — thought it was a buzzer,” Knowlton said, referring to an illegal, hand-held electric device stuck into a horse to get it to run faster. 

“It was the most irresponsible thing that ever happened.”

That became the lead story on the evening news the week after the Derby, Knowlton said.

“I got a call from the chief steward at Churchill that said, you know, we've done our investigation, and there's nothing to it.

“Then we go to the Preakness, and he wins the Preakness – blew it away. And all of a sudden, you've got a New York bred going back to Belmont with a chance to be the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. So, I mean, it was crazy. I was doing interviews at midnight with people in England that were coming off their work shift that wanted information about Funny Cide. I mean, it was great. It was unbelievable.”

Funny Cide’s popularity never ended, but why?

Knowlton said the stories about Sackatoga winning the Kentucky Derby helped. 

“We had a crew of 53 people going to (Funny Cide’s) Derby,” Knowlton said. 

David Mahan, a partner, who handled non-racing logistics for Sackatoga, asked the hotel manager if he could help get 53 people three miles to Churchill Downs, Knowlton said. The hotel staffer said he could arrange a bus for $3,600. 

Mahan said that was pretty steep.

“The guy asked David, ‘How much pride do you have?’” Knowlton recalled. “We got the school bus for $600. To this day, people still think we came all the way from New York in a school bus.”

Sackatoga needed two school buses for Funny Cide’s Preakness Stakes and four school buses for the Belmont Stakes, Knowlton said.

“I said that If I am ever going to ride a school bus again, it’s going to be for a Derby,” Knowlton said. “Then Tiz the Law came.”

But it's extremely rare that the public ever gets close to a Derby winner because almost all become stallions, Knowlton said. 

“Nobody gets to see them,” he said. “(Funny Cide) went to Ellis Park. He had a visit at Turfway. He had at least one, maybe two visits to Churchill. He came up to Saratoga probably four or five times.”

One of Knowlton’s favorite stories about Funny Cide’s status involved 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.

“One time (Funny Cide) flew up with Pharoah the year that Pharoah had won the Triple Crown,” Knowlton said. “The plane was bringing Pharoah from California and stopped in Kentucky and picked up Funny Cide (to go to New York). I go down to Albany County Airport and who's in the front stall, Funny Cide. And Pharaoh's in the back.”

Sackatoga was back to Churchill Downs in 2020 with Kentucky Derby hopeful Tiz the Law but not on the first Saturday in May. The COVID pandemic twisted the Triple Crown schedule that year, and the Derby was run on Sept. 5.

“Well, if it hadn't been for COVID, I think, you know, Tiz the Law was potentially a Triple Crown winner,” Knowlton said. “But unfortunately, everything got messed up and, you know, came out of order. 

“I mean, the way he won the Travers, I still have a hard time believing that he got beat in the Derby. I don't like using excuses, it seemed like he was not able to get the grip of the track and just didn't finish the way he'd finished all the other races.” 

Tiz the Law went 9: 6-1-1 in his career and earned $2.74 million. He stands at Coolmore America in Versailles, Ky., for $40,000. Producing turf horses like Sackatoga's own Tiz Dashing has been his specialty, although he never raced on the turf.

“Everybody wants dirt horses,” Knowlton said. “We need him to get a couple of Grade 1 winners (on dirt), and then we'll pop his stud fee up.”

Taking two horses to the Kentucky Derby and getting a win and a second has not changed Sackatoga’s philosophy.

“Buy New York-breds and race New York-breds,” Knowlton said. 

But changes lie ahead.

The renovated Belmont Park is expected to open later this year with its added Tapeta track. Tagg will take his stable to Florida as usual. But the Sackatoga string will stay in New York, and Danny Gargan will take over training, Knowlton said.

“We like Barclay and Robin so much, and they do such a good job, and they're honest and everything you could want from trainers,” Knowlton said. “They don't have any plans on, you know, sticking around (New York). We knew that we had to do something different.”

Gargan began training in 1997 and his horses have earned $28.2 million. Gargan wins at a 21% clip, Equibase data shows. 

Knowlton said that running in the winter in New York on the Tapeta surface allows owners to run any caliber horse at Belmont, rather than shipping them to race on Turfway Park’s synthetic surface or to Florida where they would face higher-caliber horses.

“We've had good turf horses that have run on (Tapeta) and won,” he said. “The purses up here are going to be fabulous for New York breds.”

Knowlton said the New York Racing Association knows that it must embellish the New York-bred program. And he said the Tapeta surface will draw a lot of horses from Woodbine Racetrack. NYRA’s been working on that, he said.

“It’s a tough game,” Knowlton said.

But having horses like Funny Cide can soften it. 

“Here are these six guys that grew up together and buy a horse for $75,000, and didn't know what they were doing,” Knowlton said. “And the fifth or sixth horse that they had, they go to Kentucky, they're in a school bus, and they win the Kentucky Derby.”

Mac McKerral is a professor in the journalism department in the School of Media & Communication at Western Kentucky University. The self-described racetrack rat has been hanging around tracks since he was 13. He has worked on the track crews at Hialeah Park Race Track in Florida and Balmoral Park in Illinois, and he has attended every Kentucky Derby since 1970. He can be reached at mckerralmac@gmail.com.