When Street Sense won the Kentucky Derby for Barrington owner-breeder Jim Tafel, it was the horse racing equivalent of Southern Illinois winning the NCAA tournament.
If Street Sense takes Tafel back to the winner’s circle in Saturday’s Preakness and in the June 9 Belmont to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978 it will be tantamount to that school becoming a college basketball dynasty.
Tafel is a man of means. But by no means is he in the same financial league as super-rich owners such as the Maktoum brothers from the Persian Gulf Emirate of Dubai, Ogden Mills Phipps and Frank Stronach.
Those owners all covet a victory in the Kentucky Derby. But none of them has ever won it and this year none had a horse good enough to make the 20-horse cut.
In February 2006 three more of the world’s wealthiest men — John Maginer, Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith — bought an unraced blueblooded colt for $16 million at Fasig-Tipton’s Florida 2-year-olds in Training Sale. They named him The Green Monkey and sent him to celebrated trainer Todd Pletcher with their target being this year’s Triple Crown races. But The Green Monkey spent most of last year on the disabled list and has yet to run a race.
The 83-year-old Tafel succeeded by investing $30,000 to breed one of his mares to Street Cry, an accomplished racehorse with an outstanding pedigree but an unproven sire. He sent Bedazzle, an unproven but well-bred mare who had won four of 22 starts.
Thinking his long-time trainer, Carl Nafzger, and thoroughbred breeding consultant, Headley Bell, might be skeptical, Tafel told them: “Guys, think what you want to, but I have another vote and we’re going to Street Cry.”
“I violated all of our rules,” Tafel said. “Normally, we like to breed an unproven mare to a proven stallion. The thing that impressed me about Street Cry was when we ran Unshaded against him in the [2002] Stephen Foster at Churchill Downs. I took a look at that guy, and man, was I impressed! Unshaded was no amateur — he won the Travers and was third in the Belmont [in 2000]. But Street Cry went out there and dusted him off [winning by 6 1/2 lengths while Unshaded finished fifth].”
Unshaded is one of many accomplished horses that have carried Tafel’s blue and gold colors. Other notables are Banshee Breeze, the homebred filly (owned in partnership with Jayeff Stable) who was the 1998 national champion 3-year-old filly, and Vicar, winner of the 1999 Florida Derby.
A self-made man whose father died when he was a small child, Tafel grew up in Pittsburgh during the Depression. He spent three years in the Army Air Corps before starting college at the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned a degree in business.
After graduation he began his career as an advertising salesman. His job brought him to Barrington in 1960.
“My company in Pittsburgh moved its office,” Tafel recalled. “I was promoted to my first management job and given a raise.”
Tafel went on to become chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the company, which published trade, management and technical magazines and had a division devoted to educational and consumer books. In his spare time he went to Arlington Park, and in the mid-1970s, he started accompanying his friend Leslie “Tiny” Welsh to the exclusive Keeneland yearling sales in Kentucky.
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Shortly after his retirement in 1982, Tafel began dabbling in racehorse partnerships and he was part of a Dogwood Stable group that owned Nassipour, winner of the 1985 Rothmans Canadian International.
Then he decided to go on his own as an owner. Tafel had become friends with Michael Osborne, former head of the Irish National Stud who had moved to the United States to run a breeding farm, and it was through Osborne that Tafel met Nafzger.
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