By: Alyssa Hong

This week, Funny Cide passed at the age of 23 years old.

Funny Cide was known for being the first New York Bred horse to ever win the Kentucky Derby. Even though he was small in stature, his running was not affected by it. When he first joined the Kentucky Derby in 2003, he was completely unknown to the public. He was against 12-1 odds, the very literal meaning of a long shot. But, when the gates opened in the morning at Churchill Downs, Funny Cide ran strong and fast. “I could not believe my eyes,” one of his co-owners, Harold Cring. “That’s our horse out front. I kept waiting for something to fall apart.”

Funny Cide ended up winning the Derby. It was life-changing for the owners of the horse, who had only taken up horse racing as a hobby. They came from a tiny town called Sacketts Harbor in northern New York. “We were just sitting around having a couple cocktails as we were often doing, and the idea came up to buy a horse,” said Jon Constance, one of Funny Cide’s owners. “From that day forward, our life has changed.”

At first, the win in Kentucky seemed like a fluke. It was widely thought of as a feel-good story about a blue-collar horse owned by a group of small-town guys who got lucky by chance. Then two weeks later at the Preakness Stakes, Funny Cide won again, beating the others by almost 10 lengths. Unfortunately, Cide wasn’t able to get the Triple Crown by winning the Kentucky, Preakness, and Belmont races back to back. A larger, pedigreed thoroughbred called Empire Maker won the Belmont Stakes that year.

Still, Even though he was unable to get the Triple Crown, he still won his owners a life-changing $3.5 million. Funny Cide spent the last 15 years of his life in comfort at a horse farm in Kentucky before passing this week of complications linked to colic.