Beaute Cachee ($53.68), first time under Dettori, takes Jenny Wiley

Not 7-2 Gina Romantica. Not 4-1 Surge Capacity. And not 13-1 Fluffy Socks. No, it was 25-1 Beaute Cachee who gave trainer Chad Brown his 11th win in the last dozen Grade 1 turf races for older fillies and mares run at a Keeneland meet.

Five-year-old Beaute Cachee, ridden for the first time by Frankie Dettori, was making her 18th start in the $600,000 Jenny Wiley Stakes on Saturday. She came into the race without a graded stakes win of any sort and came out of it, after leading from start to finish, a Grade 1 winner.

And, in the end, it was not especially close. Favored English Rose tried to make a run at Beaute Cachee, but the early and middle pace had been comfortable, and Beaute Cachee had plenty in the tank, winning by 1 1/2 lengths. The mare had been a regular front-runner during the two-year French phase of her career, but had not led in any of her five American starts.

“She didn’t surprise me that she was able to win, She surprised me going wire to wire,” said Brown, who won the Jenny Wiley for the seventh time and sixth in the last seven years. He has won the Grade 1 First Lady, Keeneland’s autumn sister race to the Jenny Wiley, five years in a row.

Beaute Cachee not only made a clear lead, she did so breaking from post 10. Dettori, who rarely has ridden for Brown, told the trainer in the paddock he planned to go forward with his mount.

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“I thought about it for a minute, and I thought, ‘I’m not going to tell Frankie what to do,’” Brown said.

Racing over a course rated “good” but producing quick enough times in two earlier turf races, Beaute Cachee went 24.18, 48.65, and 1:13.05, never pressured by any rival.

“She broke well, and I was able to get to the front on my own terms,” Dettori said. “When I got to the quarter pole, the only thought in my mind was she hadn’t run in four months, but she didn’t stop.”

Beaute Cachee most recently had rounded out a top-three sweep of the Dec. 3 Matriarch at Del Mar, finishing 1 1/2 lengths behind Fluffy Socks, who was nipped for the win by Surge Capacity. On Saturday, Surge Capacity, stalking the pace under Joel Rosario, finished evenly for fourth, while Fluffy Socks never mounted a rally and was sixth. Gina Romantica, racing for the first time since a fourth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, had won the First Lady last fall at Keeneland but never came close to threatening, checking in seventh.

English Rose, the 8-5 favorite for Godolphin, jockey William Buick, and trainer Charlie Appleby, raced on the leader’s heels and was slightly rank while held behind the moderate tempo. She had ample opportunity to run down Beaute Cachee in the homestretch while racing over a distance perhaps short of her best.

Didia, winner last out of the Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf, also probably wants to go a little farther than the Jenny Wiley’s 1 1/16 miles, and she, too, was outkicked to the wire, finishing third, 1 3/4 lengths behind English Rose.

Walkathon was fifth, with Star Fortress, Elusive Princess, and Embrace Me respectively eighth, ninth, and 10th.

Beaute Cachee, who was 33-1 just before the start, paid $53.68, a price unheard of for a Brown-trained mare in a graded turf stakes. She was timed in 1:42.90.

Bred in France, Beaute Cachee is by Literato out of Sign and Seal, by Hurricane Run. Dettori wore the silks of Madaket Stables, part owner of the mare with Michael Dubb and Louis Lazzinnaro.

The French mare wound up in two unexpected places Saturday – on the lead and in the winner’s circle.

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