128TH PREAKNESS STAKES

May 17, 2003

Jack Knowlton

Jose Santos

Jose Santos, Jr.

Barclay Tagg

BARCLAY TAGG: I thought Jose did a super job of getting him in position without losing any ground. The 9 hole isn't a favored hole you would want, I don't think, in this race, but still, it worked out fine today. He overcame it and Jose overcame it and it worked out beautifully.

BARCLAY TAGG: I always expected it to happen but it didn't look good for a long while there.

BARCLAY TAGG: I could say, what do you think, but I don't think it will be a problem for him.

BARCLAY TAGG: I think speed will help in the Belmont. He's shown he has stamina and he shows he's had speed. He ought to be ideal for it. You don't know UNTIL you do it. It's another quarter of a mile, so you don't know until you do it.

ROBIN SMULLEN: Well, I was very proud of him. I didn't think that he would win with the authority that he did. I really thought he would win although he did come out of the 9 post. I still thought he would win but I didn't expect that. That was wonderful.

JOSE SANTOS: Well, the only thing that I can say, and I've said it before, the only machine that was carrying me was the horse, the red horse. He showed it to you today and he can run like an ice machine. He was rolling.

JOSE SANTOS: I really gave him a loose rein on the back side and he relaxed real nice with me. I picked it up about 4/16. And when I picked the reigns up, he picked his up and just kept going. I started getting busy on him, hit him three or four times and pushed him, pushed him and then switched to left and he responded even more. The race is over, and the wires -- fabulous race, he did.

JOSE SANTOS: Yeah, I was very concerned about Peace Rules because he has very good speed. I rode him tight in the grass and that's why I didn't want to give him too much to do, to fantasize and put him real close. He was leading, Peace Rules, by the 3/8 pole, and I knew I was going to go by him. I looked by the quarter and I didn't see nobody, but I keep my horse busy.

JOSE SANTOS: Well, Funny Cide -- Lemon is not close to Funny Cide. He's a completely different horse than Funny Cide. He did more than what Lemon Drop Kid did as a three-year-old. I've been riding for 27 years and this is the best horse I've ever rode in my life. We're going to have Funny Cide for a long time.

BARCLAY TAGG: I was told I couldn't win the next three, so the pressure is off anyway. I think I'll be able to stay busy. I have 20 other horses.

BARCLAY TAGG: Well, I think it will be a great feeling. Maybe I can get an extra stall out of Mike. It's a great feeling. It really is. It's a great feeling.

JOSE SANTOS: Now we're going to drink for free.

JOSE SANTOS, JR: No. This is the best part of it. (Laughter).

JOSE SANTOS: Definitely, the Derby Saturday is one of my happiest moments of my life, to win a race like that, the Kentucky Derby. And then the bomb blew up, and then that was not nice. I have nice people working with me: My wife, Mike, my agent and my lawyer, and they was working for 24 hours to get all of the pictures. They did a wonderful job. We went to a meeting for two hours in Louisville, Kentucky, and everything was clear. The only thing that I want to do, to have a clear mind, to come and ride this race. But I think if you have worries or whatever, you ride this horse, he wants to win no matter what.

JOSE SANTOS: I was just worried about what was in front of me. By the 16 Pole, they gave me -- I want to win the Preakness. Then we want to go to the Belmont. It was a wonderful feeling, believe me. Winning the Preakness was more sentimental, because with all the BS that happened, and now we did it, and I don't think nobody can say anything that -- about Mr. Santos, about Funny Cide or Barclay Tagg.

BARCLAY TAGG: Well, these last few weeks have been extraordinary. They have made up for all of the other lows.

JOSE SANTOS: Yeah, that was a piece of cake. Actually, the horse sprung today better than ever. I saw Edgar, he was in the middle of the track, and then I saw Edgar look back and he saw Gary Stevens (PH) on the inside. He went back to the rail -- and the back side, I just took him to the clear to avoid all the traffic, but there was no traffic. It was an open road for him, and nobody can catch him.

JACK KNOWLTON: I think he showed today, the Derby was not an aberration. This horse truly has a tremendous amount of talent. Barclay and Robin have honed him just perfectly for the Triple Crown series. Jose, two races in a row, has given just a perfect ride. We're just having a great ride, enjoying it. We wanted to take this thoroughbred back up to New York to have a shot at the Belmont.

JACK KNOWLTON: As Jose said, he broke well, and Barclay said to Jose before the race, you know, you can't get not riding on that first turn. And Jose just rode a fabulous position going into the turn. Once he got to the back stretch, he was clear and we just felt he was going to have a big kick coming home when he needed it. He didn't need as big of a kick as he showed today to win this race. We really came into this race with a lot of confidence. Barclay told us he was doing well going into the Derby. We expected him to do well but we're pretty amazed at how well he did. It was just a great win.

BARCLAY TAGG: Certainly, it was a lot of fun to come back and everybody has been very, very nice to me here. Everybody has always been nice to me here. I had a great run in Maryland, I had a lot of fun in Maryland. Racing was good to me in Maryland. I can't complain about Maryland at all. It was fun to come back. I would like to say the whole East Coast is my home now because I spend the winters in Florida and have been lucky enough to be able to do that for the last dozen years. We keep an apartment in New York and have a house out here. I haven't sold that house yet because it's in a beautiful spot in Howard County and I would like to get back there every now and then just to see the scenery in Maryland.

BARCLAY TAGG: Yes.

BARCLAY TAGG: I'm going to stay down tomorrow. I have to work to do down here.

BARCLAY TAGG: We'll probably stop over there, too.

JACK KNOWLTON: We'll stay with our original plan. We're looking to play in the $50,000 to $75,000 range for thoroughbreds. Barclay found one he absolutely loved that we had to go up a little more, we would probably do that. We are not going to go crazy. We are just enjoying this so much. We'd like to keep Funny Cide going for a few more years.

BARCLAY TAGG: Well, we both knew that Jose's reputation -- we had no doubts about Jose at all. We thought it was a terrible shame that he and his family would have to have a cloud over them like that. It was a terrible shame. I'm all for everything being right and everyone being honest and everyone having a level playing field, but to go off half-cocked like that and not study their facts or anything like that, I thought was a travesty and I don't think it should be allowed. I just -- you know, I don't want people to say I don't like reporters because everyone I've talked to has been really nice and written nice things, but there's no exclusion for that kind of stuff without checking it out thoroughly before you go spreading it all over and making accusations. I just thought it was a terrible tragedy for Jose and his family. But we had to hold our peace and keep quiet about it. I did run into run of the reporters at Belmont the other day and I did lash out, but it was only the two of us there.

JACK KNOWLTON: It was difficult but as Barclay said we knew there was nothing to the allegations. The one thing we didn't want to have happen was for this just to hang around and be around all Preakness and detract from the Preakness. Fortunately Kentucky act quickly. The mayor of Saratoga threw a party on Monday but fortunately that black cloud was lifted by the steward early on Monday morning, so we could go forward enjoy that celebration. Unfortunately Jose couldn't, and for that I feel very badly for him. His family did get through but it wasn't like it should have been. It should have been one of the greatest days of his life but unfortunately it didn't happen that way.

JACK KNOWLTON: Yes, we did. We had 39 people on our yellow stretch limb sin. We also had another bus today because we had over 120 people who came to cheer Funny Cide on.

JACK KNOWLTON: That is a little trickier because a lot of us are from New York and how we are going to get there and how everything is going to be arranged, I don't know. But I think some way shape or form, we'll find a yellow school bus; we don't want to break the tradition. We have two legs of the Triple Crown, we'd like to get last one.

BARCLAY TAGG: You wouldn't believe all that I heard. It was overwhelming. Funny Cide had a lot more at 126 pounds to carry that all everybody was laying on him. As we went along with his progress, I had more and more confidence in him every day and he was just -- I thought he was an outstanding horse after his first race because he went into it well. Everything he did in the morning was extraordinary and the race was extraordinary. Although it was a maiden race, but still, he just had a quality about him that I really, really liked. I felt very early on that he might be this caliber horse, and he did nothing but prove it since.

JACK KNOWLTON: Barclay has been a class act from day one when we started working with him about four years ago. Every move that he's made with this horse has been right. We've given Barclay full license to make the decisions, to do whatever he thought was right for the horse because we know that it's always -- first in his mind, do the right thing for the horse. Anybody can criticize him. We knew that people were going to say, oh, you should have shipped to Churchill early and nobody can win if they don't train over the track; proved them wrong there. Proved everybody wrong when we shipped this horse in very late yesterday. Anything he wants to do, he and Robin know this horse, they have done a fabulous job. He doesn't have to go anywhere. If he's at Belmont, he walks 100 yards over to the paddock, races on his home track where he's undefeated.

BARCLAY TAGG: Well, I had told Jose that my suggestion was to stay as tight as could he around the if you understand turn. I've watched a lot of Preaknesses and it always looked like you could not lose ground around the first turn. The only horse I saw do that and run well was Secretariat and also you have to make an early move. You have to be in a good position by the time you hit that 5/8ths hole, very close to the lead. The horses I've seen do that have run extraordinarily well. I think Jose probably felt the same way because he rode him exactly that way and it worked. But I'm not saying it's because I said so. It's just kind of the way this track and can expel it easily. Robin kept him on that transpirator that we use and it just seems to work well for him. The results are out there.

BARCLAY TAGG: Well, with all the talk about him and it looked like if he had another week or so and had a race over this track it might favor his speed or might be a better thing to do. I just wanted to lay that out to him. Naturally I wanted to do it anyway, but I wanted to tell them there were other possibilities that might be right thing to do. But they weren't interested.

JACK KNOWLTON: It really has not sunk in yet. We've just got to go, enjoy this moment. We've always taken it one race at a time. We've got two for two. I think he won impressively and hopefully Barclay can keep him right on the edge going into the Belmont because that will be one heck of a day for New York.