By My Standards, Tom's d'Etat Soon Headed to Churchill

By My Standards and Tom's d'Etat, two of the top older dirt horses in the country, will travel to Churchill Downs when its stable area opens next week. 

Both horses won stakes at Oaklawn Park in their previous starts, By My Standards in the May 2 Oaklawn Handicap (G2) and Tom's d'Etat in the April 11 Oaklawn Mile Stakes. Bret Calhoun trains the former for Chester Thomas' Allied Racing Stable, while Al Stall Jr. conditions the latter for G M B Racing.

Though it's tempting to pursue a grade 1 victory in By My Standards' next start, Thomas and Calhoun said staying home for Churchill's $500,000 Stephen Foster Stakes (G2) June 27 makes sense distance and time-wise.

"We'd like to try to win a grade I race and that race was downgraded to a grade 2 last year," Calhoun said. "But I think it makes sense to stay home, run out of his own stall. I'm in a great spot right now. The horse is fresh, in great form, the timing with the races in the near future looks like it's going to work out for us. Then having the Breeders' Cup in Kentucky in our own backyard (at Keeneland); all that's very positive for us."

In partnership with Spendthrift Farm and Eric Gustavson, Thomas also owns the 4-year-old Mr. Money, winner of four graded stakes last year, who could run in Churchill Downs' new $100,000 Blame Stakes May 23 at a one-turn mile. He finished sixth over a wet track in the Oaklawn Mile in his first 2020 start.

"We just don't think he liked that track at all," Thomas said.

The one-turn mile of the Blame doesn't appeal to Stall, who had anticipated the race would be around two turns at 1 1/8 miles, the distance over which it was originally planned before Churchill Downs revamped its stakes schedule after a delayed opening amid COVID-19. He had hoped to use the Blame as a prep for the Stephen Foster, another 1 1/8-mile race.

A distance horse, Tom's d'Etat has only raced around one turn once when an allowance race came off the turf, though it resulted in a 7 1/4-length victory at Churchill Downs in the fall of 2018. So Tom's d'Etat instead could be headed to the $300,000 Gold Cup at Santa Anita (G1), a race at 1 1/4 miles June 6. Santa Anita Park hopes to resume racing next week if cleared by its county's health department.

Stall is trying to find a two-turn race 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 horse won the Clark Stakes presented by Norton Healthcare (G1) last fall.

"I'm not sure what to do. If I'd known this was going to happen, I might have run in the Oaklawn Handicap," Stall said.

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. 

"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."