In 2006, with his racing idea gestating, Plank asked his old football teammate to dinner on the pretense of just catching up. Instead, he told Mullikin he wanted to get into racing.
"Great, good luck," Mullikin remembers answering.
But Plank sold him on the dream.
"You meet lots of people but maybe only five or six you know you can really trust," Plank says. "Tommy is one of those people. I asked him if he wanted to build something special."
Sold on Sagamore
First, they had to find a home. Mullikin and Plank drove all over Baltimore County, looking at parcels of about 100 acres each. Every time they went out, Plank seemed to steer them past Sagamore and ruminate about its beauty. He had moved to Greenspring Valley six years earlier and had discovered Sagamore while biking and jogging the scenic stretch along Tufton and Belmont roads.
"It was hard to go back to anything else after seeing something so idyllic," Plank says. "I was like Goldilocks. This one was too big, this one was too small, but I knew which one was just right, you know."
He bought Sagamore for an undisclosed sum in February 2007 (he has since purchased adjacent parcels to bring the total acreage to 530.)
Plank loved the idea of bringing the farm back to its splendor. But winning had to come first, so he focused his early investments on good breeding stock and on the fields and barns that his initial horses would need.
The farm's two restored barns present a gorgeous blend of old and new. At two stories each, with large skylights to filter in sunshine and spacious stalls with windows, the barns feel downright airy. But the mix of wood and stone, and small touches such as the gooseneck lamps, allude to the farm's classic history. The barn office was built with wood from an old Sagamore hayloft.
On a late-March afternoon, Mullikin points to a newborn filly and notes that she was the first gray horse born at the new Sagamore. "Maybe she'll run like the Gray Ghost," he says wistfully, alluding to Native Dancer.
A family of black cats, the same color favored by Vanderbilt, keeps the horses company in the broodmare barn.
"You're not going to come out to the farm and see a lot of mahogany," Plank says of the restoration. "It's austere, kind of in line with Baltimore. It's got a shine on it, but it's still gritty, blue collar."
