Breeders' Cup Presents Connections: Siegel Reaches For The 'Moon' With Family Legacy
Samantha Siegel with her late father, Mace Siegel, a founding member of the TOC.
On an afternoon of racing in 1962, the grandstand at Aqueduct Racetrack would have been smaller, and likely more crowded than it would be today. Men wore suits, ties, and often classy felt fedoras, while women wore their very best dresses, all for a chance to see the horses on track. It was on one such day that Mace Siegel, an avid horse-racing fan, was set up on a blind date with Jan Winston, a Cincinnati-bred University of Kentucky graduate.
By the end of the afternoon, both Mace and Jan had cancelled their other evening plans, and just four short months later, they were married. This young couple began their foray into Thoroughbred ownership with a couple of cheap claiming horses, and, following the success of the Macerich Company, a developer of shopping malls, built the business into a solid racing stable with multiple top-level performers.
Today, the tradition is carried on by the couple’s daughter, Samantha Siegel. Though her mother died of cancer in 2002, and Mace passed on in 2011, Samantha has continued to build on the legacy of her father, both in terms of the family’s Jay Em Ess Stable and in Thoroughbred aftercare.
Before her mother’s death, said Samantha, the family’s horses ran in all three of their names. Samantha later selected the name “Jay Em Ess Stable” to comply with the New York Racing Association’s rules – she couldn’t use just the initials of her mother, Jan, her father, Mace, and herself (i.e., JMS Stable), but was limited to 18 characters, hence the “Jay Em Ess” namesake.
The Siegels were known for savvy buying habits at auctions of yearlings and 2-year-olds in training, putting athleticism and conformation ahead of pedigree. They focused on prices in the $75,000 to $200,000 price range, often competing with pinhookers at yearling sales rather than the high-end yearling buyers.
Those savvy habits helped Samantha and her father to find diamonds in the rough: they campaigned multiple Grade I winners Urbane, I Ain't Bluffing, and Include Me Out; GI Hollywood Gold Cup winner Rail Trip; 2004 champion juvenile colt Declan's Moon; and multiple G2 winner Arson Squad.
Now responsible for the stable as everything from “chief cook to bottle washer,” Samantha added to that legacy by retaining fillies they’d raced, and whose pedigrees she particularly liked, to use in a breeding program. She currently keeps a band of around 12 broodmares at Taylor Made Farm in Kentucky.
“The nicest part for me is that we don’t have our own farm,” Samantha explained, “so we don’t have to worry if the fields are moved, or if the fences are up, or workman’s comp, and I get to go see the horses whenever I want.”
By the Moon as a foal
By the Light, a mare Samantha campaigned with her father to nine listed stakes victories and nearly $900,000 in earnings, threw By the Moon as one of her earliest foals. As a 2-year-old, the daughter of Indian Charlie captured the Frizette Stakes in the fall of 2014 to bring Samantha her first homebred Grade 1 winner.
“It’s just very, very special,” Samantha said. “The Grade 1 wins are very hard to get. Although everybody thinks we’re a big huge stable, we’re not; we’re kind of a medium-sized stable. We don’t really play at the top of the market, but kind of right below the top. To get a horse like this is very hard to do anyway, but to raise one to do it is extra special.”
Coincidentally, By the Moon’s trainer Michelle Nevin used to gallop By the Light for veteran trainer Rick Dutrow. In fact, Samantha specifically sent By the Moon to Nevin’s stable because, now out on her own, the trainer remembered so much about her dam.
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Last Saturday, the now 4-year-old By the Moon took another step forward, defeating Breeders’ Cup champion Wavell Avenue by 1 ¾ lengths in Belmont’s G3 Bed o’Roses Stakes.
“You know, it’s interesting,” remarked Samantha. “She was second in the Spinaway second time out, and they made her a big price that day. Then she got to the Frizette and she was a stupid price that day in the slop and she won that. She just doesn’t get a whole lot of respect sometimes, which is a little mystifying. The interesting thing going into Saturday’s race was that everyone was picking her. And I’m like ‘Oh my God, stop!’”
By the Moon had been training in a more relaxed manner, noted Samantha, so the horsewoman expected a big effort from her star filly that day. If all goes well, she hopes that the homebred will go on to contest the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint in Samantha’s home state of California this fall.
“Sure, everybody would like to point for the Breeders’ Cup,” said Samantha. “Seven-eighths is perfect for her. If she can keep relaxing nice like she did the other day, it’ll open up a lot more avenues. So we’ll see, but I don’t write races down in pen.”
What Samantha does write down in pen, so to speak, is her stance on Thoroughbred aftercare, a philosophy she may have inherited from her illustrious father.
“As an owner, I can absolutely say no one understood the game better than Mace,” said trainer Ron Ellis at the Siegel patriarch’s memorial, “and he's passed that on to Sam.”
In 2008, the California Retirement Management Account (CARMA) was just getting underway when Mace Siegel pledged $200,000 to the budding Thoroughbred retirement support program, then challenged other industry participants to show their support.
Samantha is still a board member to this day, and also acts as CARMA’s treasurer. She recently added another hat to her busy schedule when she accepted a position on the board of the Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC), another organization her father helped to spearhead.
“Everybody has to do their fair share,” Samantha said. “You need to be hands on, and not put it off on somebody; you need to go see your horses.”
Two of the Siegels’ best geldings, Rail Trip and Arson Squad, are currently at Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Farm in Kentucky, another cause to which Samantha routinely gives generously, and she often makes the effort to visit them when she’s in town, toting treats.
Samantha’s brother, Evan, may not be interested in racing, but his daughter, Riley, was able to pick out winners on the track at the tender age of three; Samantha hopes to someday show the young girl, now 10, the beauty of Thoroughbred racing.
In reminiscing about her father, Samantha believes he would be proud of where the stable is today, and especially of her G1-winning, Breeders’ Cup winner-defeating homebred filly.
“As my dad would say,” Samantha laughed, “‘she’s better than an empty stall.’”
