Tom's d'Etat to get his shot in Pegasus World Cup

Tom’s d’Etat isn’t getting any younger. The Fair Grounds-based horse just turned 6 this week. He comfortably won his stakes debut last month, capturing the $73,000 Tenacious Stakes by 3 1/2 lengths while giving weight.

Owner GMB Racing and trainer Al Stall could keep Tom’s d’Etat at home and set the New Orleans Handicap in late March as a goal. Instead, they’ve decided to hunt bigger game, and Tom’s d’Etat on Monday was pre-entered at a cost of $100,000 for the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 26 at Gulfstream Park.

“He’s 6 years old, he’s in great form, he’s sound,” Stall said Wednesday. “Now’s the time.”

Tom’s d’Etat, a massive Smart Strike horse, has won six of nine starts in a career interrupted more than once by injury. He was set to start as a sharp player in the 2017 Woodward Stakes at Saratoga when he came out of his final work for that race with a leg fracture that required surgery to repair. He returned from a long layoff with an easy Churchill Downs optional-claiming win in November before his odds-on victory in the Tenacious, in which he earned a 99 Beyer Figure.

Stall thinks, or at least hopes, that Tom’s d’Etat could produce a peak performance in the Pegasus, his third start back from a year-plus break.

A sustained rainy spell in New Orleans hasn’t set back Tom’s d’Etat’s training, and the horse is scheduled to breeze this weekend, one of three pre-Pegasus works Stall has scheduled. Shipping plans from Fair Grounds to Gulfstream haven’t yet been finalized.

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