Tom's d'Etat to stand at WinStar when racing career ends

Grade 1 winner Tom's d'Etat will stand at WinStar Farm upon his eventual retirement from racing, according to a press release, giving the Kentucky operation likely the last significant son of the late leading sire Smart Strike to come to stud.

Tom's d'Etat, 7, has won both his starts this year. Owned by Gayle Benson's GMB Racing and trained by Al Stall Jr. He won the Grade 2 Stephen Foster on June 27 at Churchill Downs, earning an automatic berth into the Breeders' Cup Classic. He ran the 1 1/8 miles in 1:47.30, just missing Victory Gallop's track and stakes record of 1:47.28, set in 1999.

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Overall, Tom’s d’Etat has won 11 of 18 career starts for earnings of more than $1.6 million. Tom’s d’Etat, plagued by physical issues during the early years of his career, returned in strong style from a layoff of more than a year in November 2018. He won an optional-claiming race and a month later won the Tenacious Stakes at Fair Grounds. Since then, he has competed exclusively in stakes company.

Last year, he won the Grade 1 Clark at Churchill Downs. He also won the Grade 2 Fayette at Keeneland and the Alydar at Saratoga, and placed in a pair of graded stakes in Kentucky.

Tom’s d’Etat is from one of the final full crops by Smart Strike, the sire of two-time Horse of the Year Curlin; Eclipse Award champions English Channel, Lookin At Lucky, and My Miss Aurelia; Sovereign Award champions Added Edge, Eye of the Sphynx, Gold Strike, Never Retreat, Portcullis, and Soaring Free; and four other international champions. Smart Strike, by Mr. Prospector, died in March 2015. His 2013 crop of 100 foals is led by Tom’s d’Etat and does not include another prominent stallion prospect, as the other standouts from that crop are graded stakes-winning geldings Cleopatra’s Strike and Liam the Charmer and several stakes-performing fillies.

Smart Strike sired 97 foals born in 2014, with his lone graded stakes-performing son from that crop the late Battle of Midway. That colt, third in the 2017 Kentucky Derby, seemingly capped his career by winning the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, his third stakes win of 2017. He was subsequently retired to WinStar, which co-owned him, and was expected to be a popular stallion as one of the last significant sons of Smart Strike. However, Battle of Midway was found to be subfertile. According to The Jockey Club’s Report of Mares Bred and resulting foal crop statistics, Battle of Midway covered 61 mares, resulting in seven live foals of 2019. Battle of Midway returned to the racetrack and won a graded stakes during his second campaign, but sustained a fatal injury during a work in February 2019.

Smart Strike was represented by 64 foals born in 2015, and a final small crop of four foals born posthumously the following year. Neither group has produced a graded winner.

Smart Strike’s active sons remaining at stud include a quartet in Kentucky, led by Curlin, who has become a perennial leading sire and a consistent classic sire. His offspring are led by Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and Eclipse Award champion Vino Rosso, classic-placed Eclipse champion Good Magic, champion Stellar Wind, Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice, and Preakness Stakes winner Exaggerator. Smart Strike also is represented in Kentucky by Lookin At Lucky, sire of Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and champion Accelerate and Kentucky Derby winner Country House; English Channel, the sire of nine Grade 1 winners; and Dominus. Smart Strike’s other sons standing stud in the United States include leading California sire Square Eddie.

“Any way you slice it, he is top class,” WinStar executive Elliott Walden said of Tom's d'Etat. “He is the last great son of Smart Strike from the family of Candy Ride. We walked Speightstown into the stallion barn at age 7, and Distorted Humor at age 6. Hopefully, he will be another story we can tell how he defied the odds like them.”

“When my late husband, Tom, decided in 2014 that we were going to enter the horse racing business, the first place we came to was WinStar Farm to see their operation,” Gayle Benson said in a release. “GMB Racing is extremely excited that our best horse, Tom’s d’Etat, will begin his stud career with Kenny Troutt and his entire team at WinStar. We look forward to watching the second half of his career be just as successful as his first, and we know he will get that opportunity at WinStar. I am also eager to bring many of our mares from Benson Farm to breed to him in the coming years.”