Chad Brown never arrives at the Breeders' Cup with a weak hand. But for a trainer who has won 19 Breeders' Cup races, this could be the best team he's ever sent to the Cup. His ammunition includes horses like Sierra Leone (Gun Runner), the 3-year-old filly sprinting sensation Ways and Means (Practical Joke), Turf miler Carl Spackler (Ire) (Lope de Vega {Ire}) and one of the top 2-year-olds in training in Chancer McPatrick (McKinzie).
Joining us on this week's TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland, Brown went through his lineup for the big day.
“Well, it's not the most I brought in there, but overall top to bottom, there's a chance it could be (his best ever contingent), particularly with my dirt horses. I've never brought in this many live dirt horses, I'd say. I've been stronger in different years on the turf though.”
Bill Finley brought up Brown's very open disdain for this year's Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf, which will be run at a mile and three eighths and around three turns.
“Chad, I was talking to you a couple of weeks ago and you had a criticism, which is I think is well worth going over again, that the filly and mare turf race is around three turns this year at a mile and three eighths,” he said. “And you pointed out that the American grass fillies have no other races like this. So you're sticking them in a situation where they would be unfamiliar to it, maybe an advantage to the Europeans. Does that still bother you a little bit and did it affect any of the way you place your horses?”
“Yes, it does bother me,” he said. “I've been a very active participant in the Breeders' Cup, and they put on a wonderful event. It's evolved tremendously through the years. Brown said. “I have so many compliments. But with that decision…and I've been told it's because of the tight turns at the track. I understand when you move venues around, the tracks are configured differently. There's got to be some give and take there. I understand there are European horses that are important to the Breeders' Cup, but this is an American event, where they rarely run three-turn grass races for fillies. So it doesn't make any sense to me. I am disappointed. They didn't even ask me, someone who has won the race several times, for an opinion.”
He said he has not pre-entered a horse in the years' Filly & Mare Turf.
On Sierra Leone, who will be attempting to give Brown his first win in the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, it's hard to predict what he will do. He has not won since the GI Blue Grass S., but finished second in the Derby, third in the GI Belmont S., second in the GII Jim Dandy and third in the GI Travers. A victory in the Classic would go a long way toward changing his reputation as an underachiever.
“He is doing super,” Brown said. “I think he's been probably been forgotten about in the eyes of the media as far as he stands within the crop because he hasn't really come through this summer. His last three starts have all been at Saratoga. I'm not going to make excuses. You know, all the horses need to run over the same track. I chose to run him there three times. I liked him in all three races. The horse has been training super, but looking back on it and all his races, it does seem to be, even though his figures would suggest he's running as fast as ever, visually, the last part of his race, he hasn't been quite a win candidate.”
In our breeding spotlight section we took a look at the WinStar stallion Heartlandhttps://www.winstarfarm.com/horse/timberlake/.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association,https://pabred.com/https://www.kentuckybred.org/https://www.nyrabets.com/ Hubbard Feeds, the KTOB, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, XBTV.com, and 1/ST Racing, the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Finley took a look at the remarkable performance turned in by Florida stallion stakes star Rated by Merit. He is a homebred from the powerful Vinnie Viola stable. He is three-for-three so far and the 99 Beyer number given to him in his last start was the fastest assigned to any 2-year-old so far this year. Look to him to be on the Kentucky Derby trail next year. We also brought up the ongoing story of marathon specialist Next (Not This Time) pointing to the Breeders' Cup. Moss and Cadman said he shouldn't run in the Breeders Cup. Claiming that the horse has nothing to lose, Finley has been rooting for Next to go the Breeders' Cup all year.
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