Pokoik Navigates Commanding Route From Harbor

His grandfather gave him an allowance, a dollar a week. But he wanted to know how the boy planned to spend it, and didn't like it when he put a nickel into a pinball machine–even though you could win free games if you were any good.

“You don't get anything for your nickel,” his grandfather complained.

“Well, I get a free game,” the boy replied.

“If you bet on a dog or a horse, at least you have the opportunity to make some money if you're a good handicapper.”

So that was how Lee Pokoik got started, betting.

“We ate at six and at eight o'clock he'd go to the dog races,” recalls Lee Pokoik now, 70-odd years later. “So he gives me the sheets. I'm eight years old and he says, 'Pick out the winners of the first two races. It's called the Daily Double.' So I look at these sheets. I don't know what I'm doing. Well, I picked out the Daily Double. $42 for a $2 bet. He was so excited. And next night he had me do the same thing again. Of course I couldn't hit the Daily Double two days in a row.”

Pokoik chuckles at the memory. “He didn't go back for three weeks!”

But the story has two sides. One is what made his grandfather the man he was.

“He came over here from Poland when he was seven years old,” Pokoik says. “His parents put him on a ship, on his own. He was one of 11 kids. He was indentured to a tailor, that's how he paid for the voyage over. And he lived with a family, room and board, worked 15 or 16 hours a day. This family that paid for his passage, that's how he paid them back. Working in a factory in New York. And then he taught himself to read and write, because he never went to school. And turned out he was very, very good at numbers. Went into real estate–first in apartment buildings and then offices–and became a very wealthy man. A lot of the buildings we still own in New York started with him.”

And, in turn, the old man's influence made Pokoik all business, too. He went into real estate, too, and plenty else besides: he was a Ford dealer in South Carolina, where he also operated a training center for a while, and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. But even when it comes to racehorses–a passion for which is another inheritance from his grandfather, who loved to go with his buddies to Hialeah–then it has to make business sense. Which is why he is very much thinking, come the fall, about selling the dam of a colt that may well win the GI Kentucky Derby in the meantime.

The price will have to be right, mind. Sippican Harbor was a Grade I winner herself, and Pokoik put her into the ring with a maiden cover by Medaglia d'Oro after she had derailed after her brilliant emergence at two. She was led out unsold at $1.45 million, which has turned out to be a smart call. For her current sophomore is Commandment (Into Mischief), the GI Florida Derby winner, a $500,000 purchase by Case Clay for Wathnan Racing at the Keeneland September Sale in 2024.

Commandment | Ryan Thompson

Actually it's only because Pokoik runs his program on such rigorous business principles that he didn't keep him then.

“I don't keep colts,” he explains. “I'm a breeder and a pinhooker. I buy and resell horses. And, the ones that I breed, I keep the fillies and get rid of the colts. But Commandment, I thought he was a magnificent horse. I was hoping to get more than I did, and I was really tempted to keep him, really tempted. He was correct, good size, good shoulder, good hip. He had all the parts in the right places, a very attractive horse. It was one of the few times that I said to myself, 'Maybe I should race this one.' But that would have gone against what I've been doing for 35 years.

“If you keep a colt and something goes wrong, you have a riding horse. It's worthless, for resale purposes. Fillies, on the other hand, can become broodmares. So I'll keep some of those, get a couple of foals out of them and then I'll sell them too.”

The one exception is the homebred Classofsixtythree (Include), who is now 20 years old but has bred two graded stakes winners. One, Gunmetal Gray (Exchange Rate), was on the Derby trail himself in 2019 until picking up a late injury. But Pokoik insists that even this mare, cherished as she is, is not retained out of pure sentiment.

“No,” he says. “It's because she produces very correct horses. Unfortunately her last foal died, but she's due to Practical Joke and I guess that could be her last foal, at the age she is. We'll see. But Sippican Harbor has just delivered a McKinzie colt. And then I'm breeding her back to Into Mischief. So she'll be carrying either a full brother or sister to Commandment when she goes to the breeding stock sales.”

In the meantime Pokoik also intends to cash out her yearling filly by Elite Power and, assuming he develops on schedule, the McKinzie as a weanling. Though he lives in Florida, he was unable to watch Commandment at Gulfstream, owing to a prior commitment, but everything is already booked for a family trip to Louisville.

He knows the game too well to be making any assumptions; he just hopes the horse makes the gate and gets a clear run. But he remembers how the dam burned out, after running three times in barely five weeks at Saratoga.

“Sippican Harbor broke her maiden by 17 lengths at Saratoga,” he reminds us. “And then we ran her back in the [GI] Spinaway and she came from dead last. But I ran her too many times too soon. Now you look at Commandment, his races are spaced out. But actually the space between the Florida Derby and Kentucky Derby is the shortest he will have had. That worries me. I'm trying to think like Brad Cox, just as an observer. So that's one question: will it be too soon for that horse to come back without bouncing?”

Commandment emulated his dam's Spinaway performance by coming from the rear and that will also bring its perils.

“That horse does not break well,” Pokoik acknowledges. “I've seen all of his wins and in every one of them he broke late. And he will have 20 horses in a race, for the first and probably last time in his life. Not necessarily the best horse will win the Kentucky Derby. A lot depends on your trip, if you get blocked. But let's just hope he makes it to the race, and see what happens.”

And that minimal hope is no less than one might expect of a man who has been around horses since boyhood. He started out exercising other people's show horses and hunters, before ending up competing in dressage and hunter jumping himself. It helped that his college on Long Island, C W Post, had its own stables. Pokoik transferred many of the skills he developed in the show ring to Thoroughbreds, especially when participating actively with Gary Contessa as his trainer. Those skills were also inherited by his children when being raised in South Salem, New York, his daughter already in the saddle at the age of two.

Something of that pure, all-round horsemanship has gone out of our business, Pokoik fears, during his long career on the Turf. He regrets the passing of the old school breed-to-race programs.

Sippican Harbor | Sarah Andrew

“The sportsmen aren't there anymore,” he laments. “Everyone's trying just to get a few dollars out of racehorses. Those people, when they went to the races, they wouldn't think of going to the races without being well dressed. Now, you sit in the box seats at Saratoga, you'll hardly ever see anybody wearing a tie and jacket. The racetrack doesn't enforce a dress code and people just do anything they want. It's a different class of people today.”

And they breed their horses accordingly: in a tearing rush.

“Horses today are bred for speed, and bred to be early,” Pokoik remarks. “But horses don't mature until they're five. They keep growing until then, but by the time they have done their 3-year-old season, they're retired. Even the fillies, their careers are over. It's all about money. How much can I get, and how quickly can I get it? These people get their money back in a horse's first year at stud, because they bring them so many mares. If he hits, the rest is gravy. If he doesn't, he'll disappear.”

In fairness, Pokoik makes no bones about the fact that he runs his own program on business principles.

“My grandfather had a very interesting career, managing money, and taught me a little bit about that,” Pokoik acknowledges. “So I put a number on each horse. And if I don't get that number, I will try again. Because typically you have three opportunities to sell a horse: as a weanling, as a yearling, as a 2-year-old. I try to sell weanlings, mostly. You do tend to take a discount, compared to keeping them until they're yearlings, but you also lessen the risk of something happening to them in between. Of course, they change too. Sometimes for the better, but sometimes for the worse. They can develop chips, leg problems of all kinds. So when a horse looks right to you, that's the time to sell it.”

That said, there will always be that road not taken, with Commandment. Nobody quite prized him the way Pokoik did, but he stuck to his guns–and such sentiment as he permits himself, in this business, will be gratified for Sippican Harbor if she can produce a Kentucky Derby winner. Especially, of course, because he kept the mare when the market didn't meet his own valuation. She's still only 10, remember. Next time round, it feels safe to say that people are going to try a bit harder.

“Of course, horses don't know what they sell for,” he concludes. “I mean, Seattle Slew, what was he? $17,000? But no, I make sure I don't fall in love with particular horses. I want the very best for them, of course. But I don't fall in love. I've loved being around horses, all my life. But for me it's a business. I sell expensive horses. I don't mess around with cheap ones.”

His grandfather, you suspect, would be proud.