Tom’s d’Etat: All dressed up, nowhere to race

Tom’s d’Etat started his 2020 season with victory over Improbable in the Oaklawn Mile. Coady Photography

By Jennie Rees, Kentucky HBPA communications

The frustration earlier in the career of Grade 1 Clark Handicap winner Tom’s d’Etat was that G M B Racing’s talented horse missed so much racing while sidelined with niggling physical issues. “He’s had a lot of stay at home social distancing in his life,” trainer Al Stall Jr. wryly observed.

Now 7, Tom’s d’Etat has enjoyed most of two unimpeded years to great success, but the frustration has returned: This time over having a horse ready to run and, amid the coronavirus’ disruption of horse racing, no logical place to race.

Stall’s plan called for Tom’s d’Etat to return off a scheduled freshening in the April 11 Ben Ali at Keeneland. That’s the track where the 2020 Breeders’ Cup will be held and where Tom’s d’Etat won with authority in last fall’s Fayette Stakes before taking Churchill Downs’ Clark Handicap.

However, on March 16, Keeneland canceled its spring meet. Rerouting to the New Orleans Classic at the Fair Grounds, where Tom’s d’Etat was training, was not an option as that field had been set two days earlier. Plan B was going to Arkansas’ Oaklawn Mile, also on April 11, a race Tom’s d’Etat won over the talented Improbable.

Stall opted not to run Tom’s d’Etat back in this past Saturday’s Oaklawn Handicap because he had his eye on the Blame Stakes at 1 1/8 miles on May 30, a new stakes Churchill Downs created as prep for the Stephen Foster.

Tom’s d’Etat winning last fall’s Grade 1 Clark Handicap. Coady Photography

The day after the Oaklawn Handicap, Churchill Downs’ revised stakes schedule for the track’s shortened spring meet came out with the Blame changed to a mile around one turn. A distance horse, Tom’s d’Etat has only raced around one turn once, and that was because an allowance race came off the turf. Now Tom’s d’Etat instead could be headed to the $300,000 Gold Cup at Santa Anita, a Grade 1 race at 1 1/4 miles on June 6.

Usually the lament of horseplayers is that there are so many similar races clustered together that fields get diluted. Now Stall is just trying to find a two-turn stakes that makes sense timing-wise, saying he doesn’t want to go straight into the June 27 Stephen Foster off a 2 1/2-month layoff and only the one start in the seven months since the Clark.

“I don’t think it’s fair to the horse to go in off a short-stretch mile race against a horse like By My Standards, who has had three good, strong two-turn races so far,” Stall said. “I’m not sure what to do. If I’d known this was going to happen, I might have run in the Oaklawn Handicap. But this didn’t come out until I missed entries. Same thing happened in the New Orleans Classic, with Keeneland canceling after those entries closed. The Alysheba (at Churchill Downs on what would have been the May 1 Oaks card) could have been a back-up race and got canceled.

“I can’t believe things have been so weird. It’s just frustration. Things just haven’t gone his way, but it will get caught up sooner or later. We’ll get him back up to Churchill Downs next week, training him regularly and see what happens.”

Tom’s d’Etat moved up a spot to No. 6 in this week’s NTRA top thoroughbred poll, which is topped by 2019 champion older female Midnight Bisou. At age 7, he’s only run 17 times, with 10 victories. That also means there’s not the wear and tear one might expect to start showing on a horse his age. His seven straight triple-digit speed figures suggest Tom’s d’Etat is as fast as any horse in training.

“He’s actually better because he’s had a regular career for the past two years now,” Stall said. “His time off this winter at the Fair Grounds was just a plain old freshening. We really thought he’d run a good race off the bench, which he does anyway.”