arts & life

sport

The

pg Wins

Behind the scenes

with American

Pharoah's owners.

BOTTOM LEFT: Ahmed Zayat,
his wife, Joanne, and family
BOTTOM RIGH Jockey

Victor Espinoza and American
Pharoah after winning the

Triple Crown at Belmont Stakes

34 June 18 • 2015

Joanne Palmer
I New Jersey Jewish Standard

A

hmed Zayat walked to
New York's Belmont
Stakes to join the crowd
of 90,000 spectators waiting anx-
iously to see if history would be
made. Within the first two jumps,
his horse American Pharoah, a
3-year-old bay colt, had catapulted
ahead of his seven rivals and glided
into the first turn before covering
the marathon distance in two min-
utes 26.65 seconds and joined the
ranks of Affirmed, Sir Barton and
War Admiral in claiming the first
triple crown in nearly four decades.
The crowd was thunderstruck,
many with tears in their eyes, as
they cheered the once-in-a-lifetime
athlete.
"We all wanted it," Zayat told the
Associated Press. "We wanted it for
the sport:'
It was a Saturday — June 6 —
and Zayat, his wife, Joanne, and
their four children are Orthodox, so
they slept in RVs on Friday night so
that they could observe the Sabbath.
American Pharoah's jockey, Victor
Espinoza, who is not Jewish, visited
the Lubavitcher rebbe's grave in

JN

Cambria Heights, in Queens, the
Thursday before. After the win,
he said, "Wow. That's an amazing
horse:'
Zayat, who was born in Cairo,
now lives with his and family in
Teaneck, N.J.
Although most Jews in Egypt left
the country in the 1950s — when
its ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, made
it clear that their lives were likely
to be longer, healthier and happier
were they to live them elsewhere
— "some affluent Jews stayed, for
various reasons:' Joanne Zayat says.
That group included Ahmed Zayat's
family.
Ahmed, born in 1962, grew up
in Maadi in suburban Cairo. "It was
a very mixed neighborhood, with
a lot of ex-pats:' Joanne says. "It
looked a lot like here:' To foreshad-
ow a bit — among his pastimes was
riding horses at his country club.
When he was 18, Ahmed came
to the United States; he went to
Harvard, graduated from Yeshiva
University and then earned a joint
master's degree with Harvard and
Boston University. A natural entre-
preneur, he worked in a number of
fields. Among his companies was Al
Ahram Beverages, which eventually

he sold to Heineken.
About 10 years ago, Ahmed
retired — or so he says. "He decid-
ed he needed to stop traveling," his
wife says. "He wanted to be home
with [our] kids.
"But everyone who knows my
husband knows that he can't be
retired for more than 15 seconds. So
he decided to take his passion and
turn it into a business:'
And he loved horses.
Because her husband is a "very
zero-to-180 kind of person, he is
either not in it or in-it-to-win-it:'
she says. "So he decided he would
go buy some horses:'
Ahmed wanted to go into the
thoroughbred part of the horse

business. "When he needs to know
something, he becomes engulfed
in research," Joanne says. "So he
learned about it:'
When he began, nine years ago,
"he knew a little about horses, but
not enough to say at that point, 'I
am a horse maven:" she continues.
"So he started learning about the
industry — what it means to buy
a horse, at what age to buy a horse,
what are the great pedigrees. You
want to make sure that your invest-
ment is a smart investment. He is a
very good businessman:'
Looking at the world of thor-
oughbred racing, Ahmed noticed
some things right away. "It is a very
old business," Joanne says. "It is