A Story to Give Everyone Maximum Hope

Thirty years in the automobile factory–and now he has as much at stake, relatively speaking, in America's greatest race as any sheikh or tycoon, as any of these iconic Bluegrass farms.
Last August, Bruce Tackett finally quit Toyota to eke out a living on the margin of the horse business. He'd been dabbling a while with a few mares and foals, in the evenings after work, but now resolved to go full-time. “And it is full-time,” he notes with a laugh.

He had been emboldened, a few months earlier, when selling a short yearling by Palace at Keeneland for $57,000. Nice work, out of a Street Cry (Ire) mare bought for just $1,500. Up to now, however, that remains the high point.

At the same sale, Tackett bought a Majestic Warrior mare, again for $1,500. She was club-footed, otherwise he would never have landed her. But he put her in foal to Blame, her juvenile half-sister by the same sire, Ms. Bad Behavior, having won a Santa Anita maiden a few weeks previously. “I try to improve the mares if I can,” Tackett says. “I may overreach some, I don't know. Time will tell.”

Yes, it will. Only it might take a little while. Tackett lost the mare last summer, just as Ms Bad Behavior got on a roll, placed at Grade II level. Back to square one.

In January, Tackett went back to Keeneland to seek a replacement. The first two days, each page folded down in the catalog quickly transferred its crease to his brow: a few seconds of bidding, and he was out again. Another evening of homework wasted.

But he hung in there, because that's what you do. And on the third day, a young mare by Pioneerof The Nile entered the ring. Lily Of The Nile was in foal to Mr Speaker, and her only two siblings to have raced (before publication of the catalog) had won four times apiece. Tackett had noted the update, too: her 2-year-old half-brother by New Year's Day had meanwhile started out with a runaway success at Gulfstream just before Christmas, albeit running for a $16,000 tag.

“I liked her build, and from what I could see she looked straight,” Tackett recalls. “I started bidding, and then it stopped at $5,000. I thought something must be wrong, because her first foal had died. But I checked later and it died as a weanling, not as a foal. So I was surprised I got her at that price: by a good stallion like that, in foal on one cover, a young family of winners.”

Days after the sale, the New Year's Day colt won again at Gulfstream. The following month, he romped by 18 ½ lengths. Tackett's phone started ringing with offers for the half-sister to the emerging star; a half-sister, moreover, by a far more commercial sire. He stopped taking calls and made one instead, to the man who had taught him so much about horses: a distant relative, Paul Tackett.

“When I was a young man working on a construction crew, Paul rang me out of the clear blue and asked if I wanted a job on his farm,” Tackett recalls. “I really didn't know about horses, other than I grew up in the country and we just rode ponies around. But I worked there nearly 10 years and learned so much from Paul. He's been in the business nearly 60 years, he's knowledgeable, he's had good success. He dealt some with Allen Jerkens, who showed up at the farm one day and had more questions about the tobacco, curing in the barn, than about any of the horses. I usually don't like to bother Paul, but I called him and said: 'Paul, I feel like I'm in over my head, I need some help.' So he came down the farm, and we talked. He didn't tell me any prices, just gave me the advice I needed.”

Whatever the mare was worth then, she became worth plenty more after her half-brother extended his Gulfstream spree with an unchallenged win in the GI Florida Derby itself. Tackett, watching at home, was literally speechless. For half an hour he couldn't muster the cogency or calm to answer the calls of congratulation on his cellphone. Among the horses Maximum Security beat that day was Bourbon War (Tapit), whose dam, the GI Alcibiades S. winner My Conquestadory (Artie Schiller) was as good a horse as had been raised on Paul Tackett's farm. But now the young man who left for the car factory–three years in the paint booth, then a long time in maintenance, ultimately a good job in engineering–has among his nine cheap mares a half-sister to the only unbeaten runner in the Derby.

Their dam Lil Indy, carrying another foal by New Year's Day, was sold at the November Sale to Korean interests for just $11,000. She was by Anasheed, who was exported to Russia, out of a mare by Cresta Rider, sold to Chile. But that mare, Cresta Lil, was also responsible for Flat Out (A.P. Indy), the hard-knocking winner of Grade I races at five, six and seven, now standing at Spendthrift.

Cresta Lil was bred by Stanley Petter, the commercial weanling pioneer, from an unraced daughter of Double Jay. Double Jay! Can't be too many horses around who can bring him so close in their pedigree. (In 1946 his trainer Duke McCue, bragging that his colt would lead at every pole in the Kentucky Jockey Club S., asked for takers at $100 per pole. Bull Hancock thought Fred Hooper's Education as fast a juvenile as he had seen, and couldn't believe anything could lead him and still get home. On seeing McCue land his wager, Hancock promptly vowed to stand Double Jay at Claiborne some day.) Not many people will credit a hair in the tail of Maximum Security to the sire of his third dam, I know. But conceivably some worthwhile residue have filtered down from a four-time champion broodmare sire.

Wherever Maximum Security has conjured his quality, he has already decorated his half-sister's page sufficiently for Tackett to push the boat out and have her covered, this very week, by Gun Runner.

Hopefully her Mr Speaker colt will help defray those costs at the sales later this year, being “a really good-looking colt: good-sized, with a lot of muscle and bone, and straight.” And maybe at some stage someone will make an offer for Lily Of The Nile herself that does justice even to what Tackett modestly considers his serendipity, rather than perspicacity.

“Luck of the draw, that's all,” Tackett says. “Just a lucky pick towards the end of a sale. I've had a couple of decent offers, since the Florida Derby, but I'm going to hang in there. I talked to my wife and told her I'm not going to give away half that mare right now. So I'm breeding her to stand and nurse, not sharing [foals] or anything. I guess if [her half-brother] runs good in the Derby I might get a real good offer. And then I don't know. But I'll just take each day as it comes. This is a mare I always dreamed of having.”

And how do you put a price on that? Tackett's father liked a bet, had a few runners at country tracks. But he was also on his way back from Latonia races when killed in a motor accident in 1964, when Tackett was six. All these years on, the Thoroughbred has somehow pulled out this unbroken strand of hope.

Before joining his family at Keeneland on Saturday, where they have a table booked to watch the Derby, Tackett already knows he will be held up. He may only have nine mares but several are running late, foaling. And it's only by diligence, in every humble task, that he could seize the moment with Lily Of The Nile in the first place.

“If the horse doesn't run good, I'm not going to be disappointed,” Tackett promises. “I'd love for him to be in the money. But he's already done a good job for his sister, and it'll be there on the paper forever. Even if he comes in last, it won't matter. Because I've been enjoying every moment.”