When you watch the replay of the sixth race at Saratoga Race Course from July 11 (see beneath), you’ll begin to hear some shrieking shortly after the sphere of 2-year-old maidens hit the quarter pole. The shrieking intensified as No. 3 Dr. Agne and Jose Ortiz first tried to seek out some room alongside the rail to maneuver up from third place, and it reached a crescendo when the bay colt tipped exterior, took the lead on the sixteenth pole, and hit the wire a size in entrance to win.
The noise competing with Frank Mirahmadi’s name of the race was coming from a front-row field proper on the end line. It was the sound of aid, pleasure, catharsis, anxiousness and grief, and hope. It was coming from coach Cherie DeVaux, who spent the summer time of 2015 at Belmont Park caring for Dr. Agne’s dam, Girl Eli. DeVaux willed the then-undefeated Girl Eli to outlive a critical case of laminitis that she developed after stepping on a nail on her manner again to coach Chad Brown’s barn after she gained the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational Stakes.
Then Brown’s long-time Belmont assistant, DeVaux grew to become a family identify in racing due to her relationship with the filly, as did Dr. Bryan Fraley, an equine podiatrist, and Dr. Robert Agne, a veterinarian at Saratoga’s Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital.
Girl Eli’s story had a contented ending. She not solely recovered however she returned to the races and gained 4 extra graded stakes races – three of them Grade 1s – earlier than being retired in early 2018. She later offered for $4.2 million at that 12 months’s Keeneland November Breeding Inventory Sale whereas in foal to Struggle Entrance.
Girl Eli had returned to the races at Saratoga Aug. 27, 2016, ending second by lower than a size within the Grade 2 Ballston Spa Stakes. Tragically lacking from her cheering part that day was Dr. Agne, who had been struck and killed whereas bicycling in Vermont in September 2015. Agne didn’t get to see Girl Eli return to the winner’s circle, and he didn’t see her win an Eclipse Award in 2017 as champion turf feminine.
On Friday at Saratoga, Agne’s widow Carrie shared a field with DeVaux to look at her late husband’s namesake make his first begin.
“It was simply unbelievable,” she mentioned, standing within the winner’s circle, emotion evident on her face and in her voice. “I knew from Cherie that that they had excessive hopes for him, and we simply cheered him on. Irrespective of how he did, we have been going to be glad for him.”
Dr. Agne, by Into Mischief, was bought as a yearling for $185,000 by Eddie Woods’ Quarter Pole Enterprises, and DeVaux’s Belladonna Racing partnership together with Sol Kumin’s Madaket Stables tried to purchase him privately shortly thereafter.
“The worth was outrageous,” Kumin mentioned. “We’d seen him on the sale and stored our eye on him, however we couldn’t get it accomplished.”
A superficial reduce stored him out of the 2-year-old gross sales, and when DeVaux’s husband and Belladonna’s supervisor David Ingordo went again to Woods, they have been in a position to make the deal, partnering with Madaket and with Twin Brook Stables.
Kumin was additionally a component proprietor of Girl Eli, so when DeVaux requested if she may identify the colt for Dr. Agne, the reply was a fast and unequivocal “sure.”
John Sikura, the proprietor of Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm, had owned an curiosity in Girl Eli. He consigned her at that 2018 sale and he additionally ended up shopping for her.
“She was a particular race mare,” Sikura mentioned. “We want proudly owning American dust mares, however Girl Eli is a uncommon exception. She was a wonderful expertise with nice braveness, and a top-class mare for 3 years. In at the moment’s market, I’d assume that her offspring could have curiosity from everywhere in the world, given how vital turf racing is exterior of America.”
Within the paddock earlier than the race, DeVaux expressed disappointment that the race had been taken off the turf following considered one of Saratoga’s trademark thunder/hailstorms the night earlier than, however she elected to maintain Dr. Agne within the race as a result of he’d been coaching so effectively on dust.
Regardless of the win, DeVaux will level the colt again to a turf race for his subsequent begin.
“I really feel like that’s going to be his most popular floor,” she mentioned. “He confirmed quite a bit towards different turf horses, and he’s bought loads of works underneath him. He’s very skilled and precocious, and I feel that that’s what bought him the win.”
“No matter he’s on the dust, I feel he’ll be even higher on the turf,” Sikura mentioned. “He was very skilled yesterday. He was inside behind horses, and getting a race underneath his belt, getting that have, takes a few of the strain off when he runs again.”
After getting her image taken within the winner’s circle, Carrie Agne walked over to the colt, bending her head to his nostril and cradling his head in her fingers, oblivious to the commotion round her. She had met him solely that morning at DeVaux’s barn, however the attachment was deep and profound, an ideal second amid nonetheless highly effective grief.
“My husband liked racing,” she mentioned. “He liked all the pieces about horses, and he simply gave his all.”
And on a Friday afternoon at Saratoga, so did his namesake.
