This isn't supposed to happen. You don't just go to the yearling sales with a modest budget, relatively little knowledge of the sport, buy just seven horses and come away with two likely starters in the GI Kentucky Derby.
Tom and Gayle Benson don't seem to quite get that. After all, they've won a Super Bowl. How hard can horse racing really be?
“You have to remember, these are people who are used to winning,” said Greg Bensel, a spokesman for the Bensons.
Tom Benson, 88, will always be best known as the owner of the New Orleans Saints. He bought the team in 1985 and eventually helped lead what had once been one of the sport's most moribund franchises to the 2009 Super Bowl championship. There's no NHL or MLB team in New Orleans to buy, so the Bensons one day decided to go after a trophy that is available, the one given to the winning owner of the GI Kentucky Derby.
They bought seven horses at the 2014 yearling sales and two–Mo Tom (Uncle Mo) and Tom's Ready (More Than Ready)–appear to have enough points to make it into the Derby field.
“When you have two horse that probably have the points to get into the Derby you have to feel good about it,” Tom Benson said. “Our chests are popping.”
Tom Benson has had a remarkable life. He started out as a bookkeeper at a Chevrolet dealership in New Orleans, which led to him owning several dealerships. He used the profits from the dealerships to invest in banks and eventually bought the Saints. His net worth is estimated at $2.2 billion.
While selling cars and buying banks, he somehow found the time to dabble in racing back in the mid-seventies. Along with his son, Bob, he owned a ranch in Johnson City, Texas and campaigned a few Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds. He owned a horse named Si Cima (La Cima), a winner of five stakes, all of them at the Fair Grounds. His son died of cancer in 1985 and, no longer having him to share the racing experience with, Benson got out of the sport.
“It was a real turn-off when my son died and it took me a while to get over that,” Benson said.
Some 34 years after La Cima made her last start, it was brought to Benson's attention that the Fair Grounds was in trouble, that the horsemen were unhappy with management and that Churchill Downs was an apathetic owner. The idea of adding a racetrack to his list of sports franchises piqued Benson's interest.
“Since Katrina, Mr. Benson has been very interested in the health and future of anything that is considered a New Orleans institution,” Bensel explained. “If something is going into disrepair or sold to owners from outside New Orleans he becomes concerned. We were hearing at the time from a lot of people that the Fair Grounds was not being run properly.”
Due to NFL policies that discourage owners from being involved in anything related to gambling, Benson had to step away from the Fair Grounds, but horse racing was back on his radar. Around that time, California Chrome (Lucky Pulpit) was becoming a national story that caught Benson's attention. Benson, Bensel and some others were sitting around their office, talking racing one day and the subject of buying some horses came up.
“He was talking about buying some horses but I didn't know how serious he was,” Bensel recalled. “I said, 'you know what, let's just do this.'”
Bensel was enlisted as their racing expert. He was not only a fan but he was the driving force behind Last Mango Racing, a partnership group that included himself, singer Jimmy Buffet, Saints coach Sean Payton, Saints quarterback Drew Brees, Saints GM Mickey Loomis and retired NFL quarterback Ron Jaworski. Though there were plenty of deep pockets in that group, the idea was simply to have some fun, which they did with some low-level claimers.
Bensel would make some of the future racing decisions but the one thing Benson wanted was to make his racing venture as New Orleans-centric as possible. Three trainers were hired and the main requirement was that they were natives of the Crescent City.
“New Orleans is our home and it's very important to us, the whole community is,” Tom Benson said. “We wanted to give the local people a chance. They support us and we want to support them.”
So Tom Amoss, Al Stall Jr., and Dallas Stewart were each dispatched to the Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland sales. They were each given a budget of $500,000 to work with and were instructed to spend it any way they wanted.
The stable was named GMB Racing for Gayle Marie Benson. She is Tom Benson's third wife. His first two passed away. Though the horses essentially run in her name she says her husband and her are full 50-50 partners when it comes to running the stable.
The Bensons have experienced the best and worst of what one can expect when buying unraced, untested horses. Five of their yearling buys have never won a race. Then there's the Tom Amoss-trained Mo Tom and the Dallas Stewart-trained Tom's Ready.
The best day the Bensons ever experienced at the racetrack came Jan. 16 at the Fair Grounds when Mo Tom won the GIII Lecomte, with Tom's Ready second. Mo Tom's next two races, the GII Risen Star and the GII Louisiana Derby, are best known for the horrendous trips he had to endure under jockey Corey Lanerie, but having had such obvious excuses, his Kentucky Derby prospects have not dimmed. After a dismal seventh-place finish in the Risen Star, Tom's Ready bounced back with a surprisingly good second-place showing in the Louisiana Derby and actually has more Derby points (44) than Mo Tom (32) does.
“It was sort of bittersweet that we didn't get what we expected, which was to win the Louisiana Derby, but we were happy that we had the other horse run as well as he did and that now both might be in the Kentucky Derby,” Gayle Benson said.
Amoss says the Benson are just the kind of owners everyone wants. They obviously have plenty of money and while they are committed to the sport and the horses they do not meddle.
“Their great owners,” Amoss said. “I speak to Mrs. Benson at least once a week. “Either in person or by email, I give Mrs. Benson an update on the horse, what his plans are for the week in terms of training, how I think he's coming into the race, strategies for the race. All those things are discussed. She comes to visit the horses, too.”
When asked if horse racing, to them, falls well below football and basketball when it comes to importance the Bensons are quick to point out how many mornings they've spent on the Fair Grounds backstretch watching their horses train at 6 am.
“We both have a lot of energy and we both have a lot of passion for everything we're involved in,” Gayle Benson said. “We're not disinterested at all and we're paying close attention to what's going on. We love what we're doing and this is just another piece of business that we're involved with and we enjoy.”
The Bensons did not return to the sales last year, so their stable still includes just the seven 2014 purchases. But Bensel said they're already talking about going to the Fasig-Tipton and Keeneland yearling sales later this year.
The Bensons know that winning the Kentucky Derby will not be easy. Tom's Ready will be one of the longer shots in the field and Mo Tom will be overshadowed by the likes of Nyquist (Uncle Mo), Exaggerator (Curlin) and the same horse who beat him in the Risen Star and the Louisiana Derby, Gun Runner (Candy Ride {Arg}).
Yet, they know that in sports anything can happen. The Saints, after all, were a combined 15-17 in the two seasons prior to their Super Bowl win.
“The Kentucky Derby is like playing a football or basketball game,” Gayle Benson said. “Somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose. You try to be competitive and do the best you can do. The rest is up to the horse and the jockey. We've done everything we can do.”
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