By: Justin Zhao

Funny Cide didn’t look that strong when a friend group found the horse. He was small in stature. In fact, he was an unknown when he entered the Kentucky Derby in 2003 with a 12-in-1 odd to win.

However, when the time came, Funny Cide ran strong and fast.

After the race, it was announced that Funny Cide won. It was like a live-altering time to his owners, a group of high school kids from Sacketts Harbor in New York.

Meet Jon Constance, Sacketts Harbor’s mayor, and a Funny Cide co-owner.

“We were just sitting around having a couple cocktails as we were often doing, and the idea came up to buy a horse,” said Constance, the village’s former mayor and another of Funny Cide’s co-owners.

Funny Cide won again by ten body lengths two weeks after this life-altering time. In the end, however, he could not win the Triple Crown event, but it was an epic run even after he retired. Before retiring, Funny Cide won $3.5 million for his owners and co-owners.

“Funny Cide just loved to run,” Constance recalled in an interview with NPR this week. “He loved to get out there and loved to show the rest of them. He might have been small but he was powerful.”

The former mayor of Sacketts Harbor said many co-owners are still in Sacketts Harbor after the remarkable year.

Also, there was a new road called Funny Cide Drive in the village of Sacketts Harbor, which means the town named a street after their famous horse.

After that, Funny Cide spent the remaining 15 years of his great and awesome life on his horse farm in Kentucky before passing due to cholic.