The interview always resonates. It's one I recollect with ease and quote regularly -- no, not verbatim. I can't find the notes file, which may have been typed into software that no longer exists -- or perhaps scribbled into a notepad. If the computer I wrote the story on exists, it lives near the bottom of Apple's recycling chain. By now, I trust it was made into something useful.
The article appeared in MAT's March 2009 edition, the Maryland Horse newsletter section which focused on the Maryland-bred champions of 2008. Smart and Fancy won the older female title, and I talked to trainer Tony Dutrow about her. Editor Lucy Acton told me not to tell him about the championship, which would have ruined the surprise, but he didn't need much prompting. I guess I just said I was doing a story about Smart and Fancy. Dutrow obliged and told me all about the then 6-year-old mare.
As only he could.
He thought about his answers, tried to give voice to what his horse meant to him, used my name, and hers, over and over. I heard, "Well, Joe . . ." and "Smart and Fancy is" multiple times. Reading it again, the short profile in the magazine didn't do Dutrow or Smart and Fancy justice. His admiration, respect, love, whatever for the daughter of Not For Love kind of came through but maybe not as much as I wanted it to or could convey.
"I'm lucky because I have a small handful of horses like her," he said in the story. "You know, the ones you always look for, that come back year after year -- you have so much respect for them and what they do. You're really blessed when you have horses like that. They become part of the family."
Smart and Fancy did that. Purchased for $47,000 at Fasig-Tipton Midlantic's 2004 fall yearling sale -- more than double the average -- she endeared herself to her trainer, bloodstock agent Mark Reid and owner Park Avenue Racing Stable (later Win and Place Stable). Dutrow had seen the filly at breeders Tom and Chris Bowman's Roland Farm before the sale and loved her. He said he would have paid more, but that some buyers were scared off by the lack of a pre-sale endoscopy. Smart and Fancy didn't have a wind problem; she was just too high-strung to be scoped.
The breathing was free and easy as she piled up 10 wins (two in Maryland Million races) in her first 17 starts, then added three more wins during the Maryland-bred championship season in 2008. She won stakes on turf and dirt, in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York. By the time her career ended in 2009, she'd won 14 races, placed in 11 others and earned $826,433. Other than her first two starts, and her last, she never finished worse than third.
Why write all that, all these years later? Well, reader, a Smart and Fancy injustice has been corrected -- and everybody ought to know about it.
In 2012, the New York Racing Association honored Smart and Fancy with a stakes race. Originally held at Belmont Park, the race moved to Saratoga Race Course in 2014 and has been there since. For some reason, the 2015 race title became the Smart N Fancy Stakes which -- thanks to my interview I guess -- always rubbed me wrong. That's not her name. Don't cheat, spell the "and." The only horses registered as Smart N Fancy are Quarter Horses -- a Nebraska-bred of 1982 and a Missouri-bred of 2023.
The race's actual namesake didn't take shortcuts. Her race shouldn't either. For years, I've changed it everywhere I could and silently -- sometimes not so silently -- seethed over the slight. Would people stand for the Man o' War Stakes being called the Man of War? Or the Secretariat Stakes the Secretary? Of course not.
Last year, I sent NYRA senior director of racing/racing secretary Keith Doleshel an email. He said he'd look into it. He's the one who figured out that the first three runnings got her name right. In mid-March, Doleshel's stakes schedule for Saratoga 2025 came out and there it is, the Smart and Fancy -- 51⁄2 furlongs on the turf, for fillies and mares, at Saratoga Aug. 15.
Thank you. Somebody try to get Tony Dutrow there to present the trophy. And tell him I sent you.
Note: Perhaps in honor of its namesake, Saratoga's Smart and Fancy Stakes counts four Maryland-breds among its winners -- Madame Giry (2012), Ginger N Rye (2017), Introduced (2020) and Future Is Now (2024).
