How Good is Chad Brown? Very Good

The Week in Review

It has been said hundreds and hundreds of times this year, but probably not enough: This Chad Brown guy, he is really good.

NYRA put on a spectacular card Saturday with five graded stakes races, two of them worth seven figures. This is the type of program where, usually, a horse is the star of the afternoon. But as has happened so many times over the last few years, the day belonged not to a horse, but to trainer Chad Brown.

In 2016, he was the leading trainer at Saratoga, led the nation in earnings and stakes wins and picked up his first ever Eclipse Award as the nation's outstanding trainer. It appeared he set the bar as high as the bar can go, but Brown doesn't seem to believe any limits should be placed on what he can accomplish.

Brown's earnings so far this year stand at $10.4 million. His stable earned $23.1 million last year, but with Saratoga and the Breeders' Cup yet to have been held, it's understandable that he is running behind in that category. To get a better idea of the year he is having, consider: he's won seven Grade I stakes so far this year, compared to two at the same point in the calendar in 2016; and his 1-2-3 sweep Saturday of the GI Belmont Oaks Invitational marked his 28th stakes win of 2017, four more than he had on the second Saturday in July, 2016.

Making his first start since finishing fifth in the GI Kentucky Derby, Practical Joke (Into Mischief) got Brown's day off to a good start Saturday when winning the GIII Dwyer S. A two-time Grade I winner at two, Practical Joke is a perfect example of how Brown has gotten bigger and better. Someone who had never had much of an impact when it came to the 3-year-old male dirt division, Brown's barn includes three horses that have won graded stakes in that category this year. He also has GI Preakness winner Cloud Computing (Maclean's Music) and the GIII Pegasus S. hero Timeline (Hard Spun). All three are healthy and ready to go for the major 3-year-old races in the weeks and months ahead. With no one able to wrest control of the division, anyone among the Brown trio appears capable of emerging as the top 3-year-old dirt male by year's end.

But the real story Saturday was Brown's domination of the Belmont Oaks. New Money Honey (Medaglia d'Oro) led the New York Browns into the end zone, winning by a neck over stablemate Sister Charlie (Ire) (Myboycharlie {Ire]). Uni (GB) (More Than Ready) completed the Brown trifecta.

Finishing one-two-three in a graded stakes race is something that has eluded the majority of top trainers in the history of the sport. Brown has done it three times over the last 16 months alone, also taking down the top three spots in the 2016 GIII The Very One S. and the 2016 GIII Hill Prince S.

The only other time in racing history that I know of that a trainer finished one, two, three in a Grade I race was when Wayne Lukas accomplished the feat in the 1988 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. If anyone can think of another, feel free to contact us at the TDN. (Wouldn't it be nice to know for sure. No sport does a worse job when it comes to record-keeping and putting its history down on paper than racing does).

When NYRA created its Stars and Stripes Racing Festival card, which is highlighted by the Belmont Oaks and the GI Belmont Derby, it all but guaranteed that Brown's bank account was going to swell. The two 3-year-old grass races changed names and had their purses increased in 2014. Brown has won three of the four runnings of the Oaks, and when you consider its past history as the Garden City, he's won five of the last six renditions.

Oddly, the Belmont Derby has been one of the prizes among Grade I turf events that has eluded Brown. He has never won the race and his lone starter this year, Ticonderoga (Tapit), finished ninth.

As for the Belmont Derby, there were 11 starters in the field, nine of them on Lasix. The two medication-free horses, Oscar Performance (Kitten's Joy) and Called To The Bar (Ire) (Henrythenavigator), finished one-two. Talk about a WHOA moment…but we'll leave the editorializing to others.

They sandwiched the GII Suburban in between the Belmont Oaks and the Belmont Derby and it was won by the best “non-winners of two other than” horse on the planet. Keen Ice (Curlin) just keeps plugging away and sooner or later he was going to win another big race, particularly one at a mile-and-a-quarter. Winning for the first time since he beat American Pharoah (Pioneerof the Nile) in the 2015 GI Travers and ending a 10-race losing streak, Keen Ice upset Shaman Ghost (Ghostzapper) to win by three lengths. The victory pushed his career earnings over the $3-million mark.

The Stars and Stripes Racing Festival was invented in an attempt to give NYRA what every track in this sport is now looking for–an event day. It got off to a slow start, but the concept is clearly catching on. Though all-sources handle was down a bit, on-track attendance was 12,667, a 63% increase over last year.

A Very Fast Horse

Seymourdini (Bernardini) has a way to go before putting any fear into the likes of Arrogate (Unbridled's Song), but there's every reason to believe that Linda Rice has a budding superstar in her barn. What Seymourdini did in last Monday's State Dinner S. at Belmont brought back memories of Ghostzapper.

With Jose Ortiz aboard, he rocketed out of the gate to take the lead and ran the half in :44 4/5 and the three-quarters in 1:08 3/5. That was supposed to spell certain doom, but he just kept going. He found another gear at the top of the stretch and pulled away to win by 10 1/4 lengths, completing the mile-and-a-sixteenth in 1:39 4/5. A 4-year-old, he earned a 113 Beyer Speed Figure.

“He's pretty spectacular,” Rice said. “It took us a long time to get him into this kind of form. He showed a lot of talent as a 2-year-old. He showed talent as a 3-year-old. It's taken time for him to mature mentally and physically and put it all together. But today, he did.”

Rice said the two races she will point toward this year are the GI Forego S. and the GI Cigar Mile H.

It was the first stakes win for Seymourdini, who seems to have figured things out after an up-and-down beginning to his career. A $900,000 purchase at the 2015 OBS April Sale, he finished second in an allowance-optional claimer in December at Parx, but has done nothing wrong since. He came into the State Dinner off successive allowance wins at Laurel, races he won by a combined 25 3/4 lengths.

Top Jockeys, the Next Wave

While the Ortiz brothers remain the brightest young stars in the sport among jockeys, they're starting to get some company.

At the recently concluded Santa Anita meet, apprentice Evin Roman tied Flavien Prat for the riding title and wowed local observers with his talent. Roman is just 19 and tied for a title in a racing jurisdiction where apprentices rarely make an impact.

On the right coast, Tyler Gaffalione continues to make the statement that he's ready for prime time. Gaffalione, 22, rode seven winners at Gulfstream on July 4, tying the record for most wins in a day at the South Florida track by a jockey. The record had been set by Jerry Bailey. Gaffalione had 98 winners at the Gulfstream meet that concluded June 30, 26 more than runner-up Edgard Zayas. Gaffalione won with 29% of his mounts.

He has said that he has set his sights on coming to New York in 2018 and it's not hard to imagine he could make an immediate impact.

Penn National: More Questions than Answers

Here's what we know: Trainer Murray Rojas was acquitted on the more serious charges that involved the alleged doping of horses at Penn National. She was convicted only of something called “misbranding.” With that conviction on her record the Pennsylvania Racing Commission revoked her license. In addition, Penn National management has ejected Rojas, her husband Eduardo, and trainer Stephanie Beattie, two others caught up in the scandal.

But there's more to this story that has yet to be addressed. During Rojas' trial, it was alleged that there was widespread cheating going on at Penn National, primarily the use of drugs well past the required withdrawal time. How can that be when this case does not involve any positive tests? Is the testing done by the Pennsylvania Racing Commission so poor that trainers were routinely breaking the rules thinking they would never get caught? Unfortunately, it's doubtful that any light will be shed on the subject as the Pennsylvania Racing Commission is not known for transparency and its director Tom Chukas has declined to speak to the media.