Carlo and Lou Tucci become misty-eyed as they recount the thrill of winning the 2013 Queen’s Plate with Midnight Aria. When their big three-year-old gelding held off the furious rally of favoured Up With the Birds from Sam-Son Farm to win the $1 million Canadian classic, Carlo felt for the small photographs tucked inside his jacket pocket. The photos were of his late brothers, Lou’s uncles Al and Sergio, the ones who lured Carlo and Lou into thoroughbred racing some 25 years earlier.
“Al took me to the track when I was a teenager,” said Carlo, 63, who was born in Italy but immigrated to Toronto when he was just two years old. “Him and Sergio loved the track and they wanted to get into it as owners. There is a picture of me in the winner’s circle with their first horse and their trainer Archie Rennie.”
Lou, who also caught the racing bug at an early age, is only six years younger than his uncle Carlo, which explains why the young-looking men are often mistaken for brothers.
Midnight Aria’s Plate victory was the culmination of some 40 years of the Tuccis buying and selling racehorses through the claiming box. Carlo and Lou started with small stables of their own, but combined their stables with a Fort Erie runner named Ridgeway Jig. A fateful claim in the fall of 2002 was what put them on the racing map.
Coming up Roses
Lou Tucci, who was born and raised in the Little Italy community of Toronto, became more involved in the risky game of horse ownership early on when Carlo stepped away from the horses to raise a family and build his Levi’s business.
“I teamed up with Al in 1986 and ’87 and we had some luck,” said Lou, vice-president of Royal Envelope, a company established in 1989 and now Canada’s largest envelope manufacturer. “He won his first stakes race the year I owned horses with him: Drone Counsell (Woodstock Stakes, in ’88).”
Al Tucci had been in racing 10 years before Drone Counsell won that first stakes race. Later that year, Al died of cancer at the age of 43.
Carlo, who was content to be a “railbird” at the time, hanging out in the track kitchen with jockeys such as Richard Grubb and Robin Platts, eventually convinced Lou to get back into racing in 1994. After about a year of racing horses in separate names and silks, they combined forces to claim Ridgeway Jig, the low level Fort Erie claimer that was the first winner for the uncle and nephew team.
“We thought that if we combined our horses and our wins, maybe we would get on the back of the program (where the leading owner statistics are often printed),” said Carlo.
From there, the Tuccis formulated a strategy for claiming horses that appeared to have the potential to improve. In 1997, Blue Prospect, trained by Mike Mattine, won the Briartic Stakes and became their first stakes winner taken from the claiming ranks.
The Tuccis had several trainers but then hired Sid Attard as their main conditioner not long before they spotted a four-year-old first-time starter named One for Rose in the Woodbine entries, for a $40,000 claiming price.
“It’s a bit of a silly story,” said Lou. “We had just had a horse claimed off of us by the same people who had entered One for Rose. We were having a hard time claiming horses because Sid knew everyone or was related to this person or that person. It was not as if we were trying to get back at the people, I just asked him to look at her before she raced.”
Attard saw a large beautiful filly by Tejano Run out of Saucyladygaylord by Lord Gaylord, bred by Hill ‘n’ Dale Farms.
“Sid called me and said she is the 6 to 5 favourite and looks like a million bucks; there must be something wrong with her,” said Lou. “We told him to put the claim ticket in and give it a try.”
That was October of 2002, and for the next three racing seasons, One for Rose was voted the country’s champion older mare at the Sovereign Awards. She won a litany of stakes races, beat the boys twice in the Seagram Cup and earned over $1.3 million. Then the Tuccis sold her as a broodmare prospect at the 2006 Keeneland January sale in Lexington for $875,000 to Japanese interests.
“She is how we got where we are,” said Carlo. “That has been our bankroll. We have never taken money out of the account. We just put it back into the horses.”
Carlo and Lou emphasize they believe they have been lucky in the horse business, but there is a certain amount of studying racehorse performances and pedigrees that goes into claiming horses. While there have been several claims that did not work out, the list of their success stories is impressive: Just Rushing, a $40,000 claim who went on to win graded stakes races and earn over $1 million, most of it for the Tuccis; Jungle Wave, scooped up for $62,500 who later won the Grade 2 Play the King Stakes and earned over $500,000; Miss Concerto, claimed for $50,000 and a multiple stakes winner; and Artie Hot, trained by Nick Gonzalez, and one of the Tuccis’ favourites, was a $30,000 claimer that won two stakes and over $500,000. Artie Hot slid down the class ladder as he aged and when the gelding was claimed for $8,000, the Tuccis were not only shocked but also ready to claim him back.
“The groom was so upset and we had promised the horse to her when he retired,” said Carlo. “We claimed him right back and gave the horse to her.”
Secret to their success
Carlo is a strong believer in fate and it would be hard to argue with him when it comes to the story of Midnight Aria. He recently purchased a house in south Florida and was in the Sunshine State in January of 2013 when Lou relayed a phone message from Gonzalez.
“He told me to look at the form on a filly that was racing the next day (at Gulfstream),” said Lou. “I looked at the whole card of racing and liked another horse, Midnight Aria. Talk about fate, Midnight Aria, we had owned the dam of her. She was not a good claim by us. She had problems and we sold her privately to Yvonne Schwabe.”
“He was Ontario-bred, and had only raced twice and looked like he wanted to go longer.”
Carlo zipped over to Gulfstream Park on race day to take a look at the gelding. “At Gulfstream, the claim box is way at the back of the paddock area, near security. I watched as the horses came over from the barn area and as soon as I saw him I was making hand gestures to Nick to put the claim slip in.”
He didn’t need to. Gonzalez’s wife, Martha, had already done it. She had fallen in love with the dark bay as soon as she saw him. The gelding was theirs for $35,000 and in his next start, he won his maiden.
The Tuccis already had a nice Plate prospect in the form of a 2011 yearling purchase named River Seven, a top two-year-old of 2012 who was late getting to training as a sophomore.
“We knew we had a fit horse in Midnight Aria because he had raced in Florida,” said Lou. “I kept on thinking, the longer he goes the more he keeps on going. I told Nick to set up a plan for the Plate by working backwards from the date of the big race to when we claimed him and see if it he could make it there.”
Midnight Aria finished third in four consecutive races leading up to the Plate, but, under a shrewd ride by Jesse Campbell, stole the Plate away from Up With the Birds.
“I think Jesse made the move at exactly the right time,” said Carlo. “He got the jump on them, taking the lead by three or four lengths before anyone else got going. By the time they did, it was too late. It was a good jockey race.”
When asked about their methods for selecting horses to claim, Carlo joked that if they revealed their secrets, harm would come to the interviewer.
“The bottom line is, Carlo and I decide what looks good to us after we look at the Daily Racing Form every day,” said Lou. “We will look at the horse’s videos of its recent races, its breeding and then we leave it up to the trainer after that.”
The team’s most recent success is 2014 Woodstock Stakes winner Puntrooskie, who was a $50,000 claim from a maiden race at Gulfstream on Feb. 8. The three-year-old Florida-bred has already earned over $100,000.
The Tuccis say they agree most of the time on the next horse to claim, although Lou admits he is very easy to convince.
“We don’t do this for the money,” said Lou. “We have had big offers to sell some of our horses, but we always turn them down. We love the game, we love to watch our horses race.”
