Only one horse bred in New York State has ever won the Kentucky Derby: Funny Cide in 2003. The New York-bred is a humbler version of its Kentucky cousin, seldom celebrated on racing’s greatest stages.
This year, the connections of Went the Day Well hope to change that. And if they do, they’ll have people in three countries to thank.
Went the Day Well is owned by Team Valor, trained by Graham Motion, and ridden by John Velazquez, the same connections that won last year's Kentucky Derby with Animal Kingdom.
Unlike Animal Kingdom, Went the Day Well was a world traveler by the time he hit his third birthday (officially, all Thoroughbreds become a year older on January 1). Born at Keene Stud in Amenia, New York, he was sold as a weanling at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky, in November, 2009, purchased by Ireland’s Grove Stud. “He was a lovely, balanced horse. I liked him an awful lot,” said Grove’s Brendan Holland. “He was a bit backward as a yearling; he had loads of size, but he hadn’t bulked up yet.”
The young horse stayed in Ireland for about a year, which marked a symbolic return to his roots. Went the Day Well was bred by Austin Delaney, an Irishman who’d immigrated to the United States as a young man and made a name for himself in the New York City restaurant business. He owned, among others, Rosie O’Grady’s Saloons in midtown and the Harbor Lights restaurant in the South Street Seaport.
He also loved horses, owning and breeding them in New York State, and Went the Day Well was among the last horses he bred; Delaney died in May 2009, just a few months after the colt was born.
The colt’s dam was named for Delaney’s sister Maie. “She’s my father’s only remaining sister,” said Delaney’s daughter Ann Marie. “She still lives in Ireland, in County Mayo, where Dad is from.”
From Ireland, Went the Day Well—who, as is typical of young horses, had not yet been named—went to England, to be sold as a yearling in the Tattersalls October 2010 sale. He was purchased by Oliver St. Lawrence, a bloodstock agent, on behalf of Dr. Mark Ford and his wife Leigh-Ann.
“He had ‘something’ about him,” wrote St. Lawrence from England. “He appealed to me as an attractive, well-grown colt that might need a bit of time. I was delighted that we managed to get him, and he hasn’t disappointed anyone to date.”
The colt began his racing career in England in September 2011, racing for Ford’s LAM Partnership. According to St. Lawrence, when deciding on a name for the colt, Ford began with the dam’s name and then took into account his sire, Proud Citizen.
“’Went the Day Well’ comes from an epitaph written by John Maxwell Edmonds following World War I, entitled ‘On Some who died early in the Day of Battle,'” reads a document written by Ford and provided by St. Lawrence. The epitaph reads,
Went the day well?
We died and never knew;
But well or ill, England, we died for you.
“His dam is Tiz Maie’s Day,” Ford’s document continues. “From this start ‘Went the Day Well’ came to mind and with his sire, Proud Citizen, evoking thoughts of civic pride it seemed to connect well. Finally, the day ‘going well’ sounded very appropriate for a racehorse.”
And indeed it was. Went the Day Well finished second by less than a length in his first start at Haydock Park in Wales, so impressing Team Irwin’s Barry Irwin that he purchased 75% of the horse, with Ford retaining the other 25%. After another second place finish in the U.K., where horses race primarily on grass, Irwin brought him to the United States.
“He’s an American-bred horse and he looks like a dirt horse,” said Irwin. “I watched him train, and I was so convinced that that he’d do well on dirt that I bought his dam as well.”
Went the Day Well stamped himself a Derby contender when he won the Grade 3 Vinery Spiral at Turfway Park in March, the same race that Animal Kingdom won before going on to win the Kentucky Derby. On both sides of the Atlantic, people watched as the well-traveled colt won by more than three lengths.
“We called our Aunt Maie when he won,” said Ann Marie Delaney. “She was thrilled and delighted.”
According to his daughter, getting a horse to the Kentucky Derby was Austin Delaney’s dream. It didn’t happen during his lifetime, but Ann Marie is pretty sure that her father’s watching.
“If he could come back from the grave for anything,” she said, “this would be it.”
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