Patience Pays Off With Whitney Favorite Tom's d'Etat

In the spring of 2018, Greg Bensel, the racing manager for G M B Racing, was riding his bike through the operation's 1,000-acre Benson Farm at Greenwood Lodge in Paris, Ky.

On that day, he journeyed into a rather deserted part of the farm and passed what is called the Creek Barn, an isolated structure used for quarantines or horses recovering from an injury.

As he looked into the barn's paddock, he saw a solitary horse who had become quite familiar to him during previous rides past the Creek Barn.

"I saw him there," Bensel recalled, "and said to myself, 'He's still there?' I had to see him at that barn 10 months earlier."

That horse, who was spending more time at the Creek Barn recovering from injuries than training at the racetrack, was Tom's d'Etat, then a 5-year-old with just seven starts for trainer Al Stall Jr., none of them above the allowance optional claiming ranks. 

These days, Bensel shakes his head in amazement at what has become of that longtime resident of the Creek Barn.

"Boy, has he come on," Bensel said.

Indeed he has. So much so that Tom's d'Etat is heading into the Aug. 1 Whitney Stakes (G1) at Saratoga Race Course as a 6-5 favorite in one of the year's premier dirt races for older horses and rates as a leading contender in many eyes for Horse of the Year honors.

"It's amazing what he has done, and the best might be yet to come," Bensel said.

What brought Tom's d'Etat from the Creek Barn to an elevated status among a field of five millionaires Saturday is the tale of a horse who has overcome a series of physical problems, including two ankle surgeries, and connections whose patience in nursing him back to the racetrack has been amply rewarded with more than $1 million in earnings, a victory in the Stephen Foster Stakes (G2) in near track-record time in his previous start and a grade 1 score in his 2019 finale, and a recent stallion deal with WinStar Farm.

"There was a lot of rehab and a few minor surgeries here and there. He's patched together," said Bensel, who manages G M B's racing and breeding operation for owner Gayle Benson. "He has a big heart. When he gets in the lane and sees his prey, you see what kind of heart he has."

To better understand the strong bond between the G M B team and Tom's Etat, the son of Smart Strike has roots that date to 2014 when original owner, Tom Benson, Gayle's husband who passed away in 2018, put together a $2 million equine salary cap at yearling sales to buy seven horses and launch the stable that carries Gayle's initials.

At the time, Tom Benson was a highly successful New Orleans businessman and philanthropist who owned the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League and a National Basketball Association team that is now known as the New Orleans Pelicans.

When he entered Thoroughbred racing, Benson's first acquisition was Tom's Ready, a Pennsylvania-bred son of More Than Ready  who cost $145,000. Turned over to trainer Dallas Stewart, he became a grade 2 winner who earned $1,036,267 and finished 12th in the 2016 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1).

The second horse they bought, a son of Uncle Mo  named Mo Tom, cost $150,000 and earned $665,356 while racing almost exclusively for Tom Amoss. He also brought the Bensons to the Run for the Roses and finished eighth.

Tom's d'Etat commanded a $330,000 outlay at the 2014 Keeneland September Yearling Sale from the Hunter Valley Farm consignment.

When Tom Benson passed away March 15, 2018, and left his business holdings to his wife, Tom's d'Etat was in the Creek Barn and was the underachiever of the stable's original trio.

"He had a couple of ankle surgeries," Stall said. "You blink your eye and six months goes by here and six months goes by there and he's 5 already."

It is those memories of the stable's early days coupled with Tom's d'Etat's rise to prominence that has created so many fond memories of Tom Benson and happy times together with him for his 73-year-old widow and the management team she assembled.

"Mr. Benson loved the excitement and pageantry of racing, and so does Mrs. Benson. She loved being at Keeneland and (Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots) with him," said Bensel, who also serves as the senior vice president of communications for the Saints and Pelicans. "She has a great passion for the sport and loves making monthly trips to the Kentucky farm. We have 15 broodmares at the farm who she has bred to stallions like Justify , American Pharoah , and Gun Runner . She has spared no expense.

"I've been with them for 25 years, and Mr. Benson treated me like a son as well as Dennis Lauscha (Saints president). Mr. Benson was loyal to the core. A great man. Mrs. Benson is very gracious and kind. She's a great boss and a great NBA and NFL owner. She trusts her staff and lets them run the operation."

Even the "d'Etat" references Tom Benson as Bensel said "it fit Mr. Benson's personality to take over and conquer, which is what the word means. He rarely lost any battles he took on, and that's why the name stuck."

Turning Tom's d'Etat into a grade 1 winner was Stall's piece of the puzzle. 

"He's drinking from the fountain of youth," Stall said about the winner of 11 of 18 starts and $1,627,272. "I'm not going to question the how's or the why's, but he's gotten us here to the Whitney at the age of 7. He finished last year great and had a great winter. His two comeback races (this year) were everything we could ask for."

Stall did not get Tom's d'Etat to the races until May of his 3-year-old season, and it was hardly worth the wait. Sent off at 16-1, he finished 11th of 12 in a mile turf race at Churchill Downs. 

"He did everything but stop and graze," Stall said. 

After that, Stall took the unusual step of running him in a 1 1/4-mile maiden race, and the offspring of the Giant's Causeway mare Julia Tuttle responded with a promising second-place finish. 

Shipped to Saratoga, he recorded his first win in a 1 1/8-mile trip around the Spa (the same distance he'll cover in the Whitney), but then an injury popped up and he was sidelined until March 20, 2017, when he was victorious at Fair Grounds in an allowance optional claiming race. After a fourth-place finish in the slop, he strung together two more wins—capped by another nine-furlong win at the Spa—before ankle woes sidelined him for a little more than 15 months.

When he returned from his days at the Creek Barn, Tom's d'Etat was better than ever. He was a 7 1/4-length winner of an off-the-turf Nov. 4, 2018, allowance optional claimer at Churchill Downs and a month later made a successful stakes debut by taking the Tenacious Stakes at Fair Grounds.

"Al's philosophy is very well thought out," Bensel said. "He takes his time with horses and has great patience. This horse really fit him well."

Off his initial stakes win, Tom's d'Etat made an ambitious jump into the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes (G1) and finished ninth, beaten 27 1/4 lengths on a sloppy track. Brought back about three months later in the Alysheba Stakes (G2), he was second to McKinzie, and after placing in the Stephen Foster Stakes (G2), he added a third 1 1/8-mile win at Saratoga in the Alydar Stakes.

Showing no one's perfect, he was fourth in Saratoga's Woodward Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets (G1) at nine furlongs, but he's been unbeaten since then. 

He closed 2019 with wins in the Hagyard Fayette Stakes (G2) and then the Clark Stakes Presented by Norton Healthcare (G1), then started 2020 with a victory in the Oaklawn Mile Stakes that led to a sparkling 4 1/4-length score in the June 27 Stephen Foster, where Tom's d'Etat covered the nine furlongs in 1:47.30 and missed a 21-year-old track record by .02.

"His last race was a knockout race," Stall said. "He caught everyone off guard. We thought he would run well and that he could win, but coming close to the track record and running the way he did off one race in 211 days? That knocked our socks off."

It's been a run so impressive that it's carried him to the No. 1 spot in the latest poll of contenders for the Longines Breeders' Cup Classic (G1).

"He got continuity in his training, and that's when he got really good," Stall said. "We were starting and stopping, starting and stopping for four years. Then he finally said, 'I'm going to stay together,' and we finally got to race and breeze him on a regular schedule and then he got dialed in. Once he got to do all that on a rhythmic pattern, he really developed between 6 and 7. He's now a big, strong, healthy horse.

"It's all about talent and the right mental attitude," added the winner of 1,670 races since 1991. "If a horse is lucky enough to have all that, they can run well over a few years."

For Stall, this year is beginning to produce the same vibes as 2010 when he won the Stephen Foster and Whitney with Blame  and then engineered an unforgettable upset in the Classic that handed Zenyatta her lone loss.

"Like Blame, he's easy to train. They both have class, and that's the key word," Stall said. "A horse like Tom's d'Etat is why we are here. Having him in the barn keeps your mind going a whole more. It's stressful, but it's a nice type of stress. We enjoy being with him on a daily basis."

With Tom's d'Etat heading to stud next year, his final few races promise to be emotional for his connections, but knowing that the veteran campaigner will enjoy a comfortable life as a stallion at WinStar brings a smile to Stall's face.

"I'm happy when horses get good homes after their career is over, so I'm very happy for him," Stall said. "WinStar is a beautiful place, so that worked out really well."

Tom's d'Etat's career has also worked out pretty well after an ignominious debut and some stops and starts along the way, but best of all, there's even the chance that in his fifth and final season of racing, something special could be in the air.

"If this horse wins the Whitney and the Classic to become Horse of the Year, it would be so special to be recognized at that level," Bensel said. "It would mean so much because we're a boutique operation that's facing the big boys all the time and holding our own."