Bricks and Mortar building a mountain of cash

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – When John Henry won the inaugural Arlington Million in 1981, he became the first horse – turf, dirt, or otherwise – to win a $1 million race.

When Bricks and Mortar lines up Saturday as the heavy favorite in the 37th renewal of the Arlington Million, he’ll be trying to take down his fourth seven-figure purse of 2019 alone.

Million-dollar races have become a dime a dozen – Oaklawn Park alone will have four of them during its 2020 racing season – and Bricks and Mortar has come along at just the right time. Never has an older turf horse had so many chances to bank so much coin, and Bricks and Mortar has made the most of it.

On Jan. 26 at Gulfstream Park he won the first edition of the $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational. On May 5 at Churchill Downs he captured the Turf Classic, which had a purse hike to $1 million this year. And on June 8, one race before the Belmont Stakes, Bricks and Mortar was 1 1/2 lengths best in the Manhattan, which has been a $1 million race since 2014.

It’s barely August and already during a 4-for-4 campaign that also includes a narrow victory in the $300,000 Muniz Memorial at Fair Grounds, Bricks and Mortar has earned $3,941,650. His career total stands at $4,303,650.

“He’s the highest-earning horse we’ve ever trained,” said his trainer, Chad Brown.

Brown also ranks Bricks and Mortar “right at the top” of a star-studded group of turf performers he’s handled. Many of those, like Lady Eli and Sistercharlie, who races here Saturday in the Beverly D., were fillies, and Bricks and Mortar is closing in on Flintshire, another male whose training Brown took over relatively late in his career.

Bricks and Mortar has been with Brown from the start, and his path to this $4 million half-year hasn’t been smooth. Bricks and Mortar, campaigned by Klaravich Stables and William Lawrence (and whose stallion rights were sold to Shadai Farm in Japan this week), debuted in February 2017 and won his first four starts as a 3-year-old. That September he was a tough-trip third in the Saranac and a month later a tough-trip third in the Hill Prince – which nearly became the colt’s career terminus.

Bricks and Mortar later that year was diagnosed with a serious case of stringhalt, a neuro-muscular condition that causes a leg to lock and interrupts a horse’s gait. Further relatively minor problems delayed his return to racing until this past December.

Brown said: “He’s been through a lot. Dr. Larry Bramlage and his team at Rood and Riddle were amazing. Larry did a complicated surgery on him at the end of his 3-year-old year. Then he was with Ian Brennan at Stonestreet for nearly a year. Ian was training him, not me, and he got the horse ready.”

Bricks and Mortar’s immediate goal was the Pegasus Turf, but now, four races later, he has run the table this year while entering any discussion regarding the best turf horses of the millennium. Wise Dan, the two-time Breeders’ Cup Mile-winning gelding, stands atop that list, but in terms of million-dollar wins, Bricks and Mortar already occupies a unique position.

American Pharoah during his 2015 campaign took down seven million-dollar pots, easily the highest single-season total in American racing history. Justify won four in 2018, and it nearly always is a 3-year-old who has the most such victories in a year. No older American horse ever has won more than two million-dollar races in a year, and only Wise Dan and Little Mike have captured two seven-figure turf races during a single season.

Bricks and Mortar’s million-dollar triple obviously is a function of opportunity, but his glittering 2019 résumé would be one of the better recent American turf campaigns sans the mega-money. The only turf horse since 2000 to come into August with anything like Bricks and Mortar’s three Grade 1’s and one Grade 2 is Gio Ponti in 2009 during a campaign that probably hasn’t been adequately lauded. It started with a fifth-place finish on an all-weather track in the Strub Stakes, after which he won the Grade 1 Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita, the Grade 1 Manhattan over 1 ¼ miles at Belmont, and the Grade 1 Man o’ War there over 1 3/8 miles before coming to Arlington and dominating the Million.

The Million, at 1 ¼ miles on turf, provided nearly ideal conditions for Gio Ponti, who in a pinch could back up to one mile and, calling on his deepest stamina reserves, get 1 ½ miles against standard Grade 1 performers. But while Gio Ponti had the 1 ¼-mile Breeders’ Cup Classic over a synthetic track as a year-end goal in 2009, for Bricks and Mortar, Saturday’s race is the last one of the North American season between nine and 10 furlongs with stature worthy of his talent. At the Breeders’ Cup, it’s either back up to the Mile or stretch to the 1 ½-mile Turf.

“I honestly don’t know yet what we’ll do,” said Brown. “I’m just going to go with this race first and see how it goes and go from there. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. My feeling is the cutback would be the lesser of two evils, but I do need to see how this race unfolds.”

The most likely scenario has Bricks and Mortar winning yet another seven-figure race. It only feels like he’s won a million of them this year.