TDN Q & A with Chad Brown

Chad Brown has steamrolled his way through the sport this year, even more so than what has become normal for the 40-year-old trainer. He has the leading candidate for Horse of the Year in Bricks and Mortar (Giant's Causeway), swept the four graded races on the Arlington Million Day card, including all three Grade Is, and is running away with the Saratoga training title. The TDN sat down with Brown to catch up on the latest news from his stable and to get his thoughts on how and why he has become the sport's most successful trainer.

TDN: Bricks and Mortar has never raced at a mile-and-half and is three for three at a mile. His perfect distance appears to be a mile-and-quarter, but with no Breeders' Cup turf race available at that distance, which direction are you going to go in–the GI Breeders' Cup Mile or the GI Breeders' Cup Turf?

CB:  I'm unsure at this point. I have not decided. He had his first piece of work [Monday] back and just went an easy half mile. He went fine, but I haven't reached any decision yet about which direction we'll go, either stretching him out or cutting him back. I'm not sure if he will run again before the Breeders' Cup. We haven't ruled anything out yet, but I'm a couple of weeks away from deciding. Nothing is set in stone.

TDN: One of the most interesting developments over the last few years in your career has been the reintroduction of Peter Brant to racing after an absence of about 17 years. Obviously, you two have been quite successful together. How did this come together? Did he contact you? Did you reach out to him?

CB: He contacted me and I went for an interview with him and we talked quite a bit. I could tell right away that he had a vast knowledge of the game and he was very interested in what had changed and what had stayed the same. And shortly thereafter he contacted me and said he wanted to get together with me and do some business together and it's grown from there.

TDN: Did he tell you why he wanted to get back into racing after all those years?

CB: At the time that I interviewed with him he was injured in a polo match and he indicated that he probably needed to slow down so far as the amount of his participation in polo and perhaps not play anymore at all. And so he was looking to get back in Thoroughbreds. He wasn't quite sure at the time of how involved he'd get, but he wanted to shift back to the Thoroughbreds, just start together and to see how it went.

TDN: Having won races like the GI Champagne S., the GI Preakness S., the GI Haskell Invitational, the GI Alabama S., you're no longer regarded as just a turf expert. However, if you look at your record, the races that are most prominently missing from your resume are races like the GI Kentucky Derby, the GI Belmont S., the GI Travers S., the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. How important is it to you to win those kinds of races? Or are you just happy to just keep winning races no matter what surface they're on?

CB: No, our business is focused on winning the Derby and some of these other major dirt races we haven't won yet. But those things just take time. We're starting our 12th year in business. We have already won a lot of big dirt races. But we have a huge turf operation and that's something I'm not going to peel back or shift away from. I'm trying to add more dirt prospects. We've been doing that over the last few years and I think it's going to continue to evolve that way.

TDN: You talk a lot about how highly you regard your employees, from the hot walkers to the assistant trainers. How do you attract top quality people? Also, I hear your turnover rate is very low.

CB: I have an enormous respect for our staff from every position. I've gone out of my way to constantly use the platform we've had for the last three years at the Eclipse Awards to try to thank as many people as I can and it's genuine because it's such a team effort. I think it's a two-way street when it comes to developing your teammates, co-workers and, yes, we have some of the most talented people in the country work on our horses. I see some other fellow trainers at the top with the same people working for them for a long, long period of time and I think they're fabulous as well. I see the see this with people like Bob Baffert, Bill Mott, Todd Pletcher, Shug McGaughey, Kiaran McLaughlin. I see some of the same people since I came on the racetrack still with those guys. It's no different from us. I'm very pleased with our team and it takes training them just like I train the horses, and I think they'd say they've learned quite a bit from me. I think we've made them better at their jobs, but you have to have a high learning curve and a lot of talent to receive that information and use it and get better. Without my team and without their extraordinary skill sets, whether they came to our company with them or learned them or honed them with us, there's no way that we'd be able to have these types of seasons we've been cranking out. And, yes, we have extremely low turnover. One thing I learned from Bobby Frankel is that you should take really good care of everybody who works for you.

TDN: What you accomplished on GI Arlington Million Day, sweeping all four graded stakes, including the three Grade I races, has to be the training feat of the year. How do you rank that among your career accomplishments?

CB: It was a really great feeling. You plan off in the distance for a big day of racing like that, which we always do for that big day of racing at Arlington. Then you see all of the planning and hard work by our team and the consistency of the horses in the morning doing what we ask them to do and then everything comes together the way it did. To win all four races was one of our greatest days as a team since we've been in business and it was extremely rewarding. I love going to Arlington and that was a special day that I'll never forget.

TDN: Because you were once his assistant, most people consider Bobby Frankel your mentor. But a lot of people seem to forget that you also worked for Shug McGaughey. You and Shug were the human stars last Saturday. He won the GI Runhappy Travers S. and you won five races, including two graded stakes. What did you learn from McGaughey while working for him?

CB: Shug has always been an incredibly patient trainer, especially with these young horses. I learned quite a bit just watching, observing him. When those big horses identify themselves, he's arguably one of the best managers in racing. When I worked for Shug, I just started out at the bottom as a hotwalker. I was there for some summers and a little bit full time when I got out of college. I believe the last year I worked for him was in 2001. I have great admiration for him and I was very happy to see him and Mr. Farish win the Travers. I was fortunate to work for two legendary, Hall-of-Fame trainers that did things the right way.

TDN:  I think one of the things that makes you good, and this would go for probably anybody who's successful, is your competitive nature. You won five races on Travers Day and two stakes races, but you did not win the Travers and neither of your two entrants hit the board. Do you go home on a day like that thinking what a great day I had or do you go home focused on and miffed by the fact that you were unable to win the biggest race of the day?

CB: In a constructive way, I always go home focusing on the races we didn't win and why. Not so much in a disappointed way. I think I do it in a constructive way. I've left Breeders' Cup days the last few years after winning some races and, while flying home, I'll go through the ones we didn't win and think about why. That's part of just trying to get better and being competitive. On Travers Day, there were some horses that just didn't show up. As for the Travers, that was a race that, afterward, I was trying to figure out if there was anything we could've done differently. Yes, Annals of Time (Temple City) won the [GI] Sword Dancer for us, but Ya Primo (Chi) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) was last in the same race and he's a good horse. How does that happen? So, I go back to the drawing board. There's always some post-mortem work to do.

TDN: There's still so much talk about the super trainer concept and whether or not the super trainers are bad for racing. You've become the poster child for super trainers. To those who say you are bad for the game, what is your rebuttal?

CB: It's free enterprise. I started with basically nothing, 10 horses and two clients, and I worked hard. I was lucky enough to learn from some great people and I've grown my accounts. I've attracted owners, and we've grown. I'm playing by the rules. I have owners in my barn that came to me that wanted to buy five horses a year and now they might have 20 or 30. So if we're increasing commerce in the game, everybody's doing good. It's trickling down to the breeders, it's trickling down to the racetracks for betting and takeout. There are a lot of great trainers out there and it just comes down to how you structure your business, taking care of your clients and understanding what their goals are. When I go to Keeneland in a couple of weeks and go buy horses, that's all money I've raised over the years trying to do it. That's good commerce. I don't feel like our stable has gotten bigger because all the owners are running to us. There are a lot of top owners out in the game that I don't have horses for and I've never had horses for. We've grown our accounts internally because our owners are having success. There are owners who came to us years ago that weren't doing that well and then they came into our barn, and for whatever reason, we've had success and now they want to buy more horses and do more business in the game instead of leaving the game. Do you tell them, well, you finally found your trainer that you're doing well with, but you can only have so many horses with him? I don't think that's the right message to send to owners that want to spend money in the game. I think it's a fair conversation. I don't answer that in any defensive way, but I just look at it practically and I think that the larger stables and larger owners are our friends in the industry. I think a more constructive approach would be to bring them to the table saying, how can we keep everybody in business? What can we do for smaller stables, meaning owners or trainers, to help them flourish or grow their businesses? Is there something they can learn from us? Can they run their business more efficiently? Are there training techniques or business structures that they can use to do better? Should we give some subsidies to some trainers to give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace with their pricing until they get up to a certain level? I'm open to all of that, but I don't know about just handing people horses or limiting restriction of free trade. I don't think that's the right message for our industry.

TDN: Anybody who is doing well in America with grass horses is getting a lot of them from Europe, yourself included. A horse like Sistercharlie (Ire) (Myboycharlie {Ire}) comes to mind. What's the process? Is there any one particular person you use over there? What kind of horses are you looking for?

CB: We have a pretty vast network depending on what regions of the world we're looking at horses. There are a few different people in Europe we'd use depending on where they are and what their contacts are. We're buying horses in South America now, too. Sometimes it comes down to the client and who they have a relationship with. And I'll tell you one thing that's common in all areas is that it's getting harder to buy horses. There are fewer horses now racing abroad that are owned by people that are really willing to sell them or at least willing to sell them at a fair price. It's getting very competitive to buy the horses. It's an evolving market that you have to make adjustments to. We have had to go over and start buying yearlings at their sales. If we can't buy these horses when they're racing already, why don't we try to buy them unraced and bring them over because we know a lot of their blood might be a little better than our blood when it comes to turf racing.

TDN: If I could ask you to limit it to one goal and one goal only of things that you still want to achieve in horse racing, what would that be?

CB: Winning the Travers.

TDN: More so than the Kentucky Derby?

CB: By a nose. I could feel it last week with this Travers. I thought we had a good chance, especially with Highest Honors (Tapit) and Saturday I just felt really good about that horse. I just know the feeling I had when they went in the gate. The feeling I had, with my family and friends there, that was confirmation of how important that race is to me after growing up in the area and spending so much time at Saratoga since I was very young. This is something I really want to do. So if there's one race I want to win more than any other, that would be the race at the top of my list.