Brown believes Goodnight Olive is ready for return in Madison

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Conventional wisdom is that Breeders’ Cup winners making their first start back following a layoff are perennially overestimated. That would seem to apply to Goodnight Olive returning from a five-month rest Saturday in the Grade 1 Madison Stakes, but Chad Brown doesn’t necessarily agree.

“She hasn’t missed a beat,” Brown said of Goodnight Olive, who will make her 5-year-old debut as a heavy favorite in the $600,000 Madison. “She’s had a really nice winter.”

Goodnight Olive, owned by First Row Partners and Team Hanley, is one of just five fillies and mares in the seven-furlong Madison, which has become a pivotal early-season race in a division often decided some seven months later by the BC Filly and Mare Sprint at the same distance. Goodnight Olive was a 2 1/2-length winner of the Filly and Mare Sprint here last November, clinching an Eclipse Award.

“We’re glad to have her back over a track she obviously likes,” said Brown.

Irad Ortiz Jr. has a return ride on Goodnight Olive, a dark bay Ghostzapper mare who carries a six-race win streak into the 22nd Madison, all of them by open lengths. After being defeated in her first start in March 2021 at Gulfstream Park, she has gone unchallenged, starting with a Keeneland maiden race and an Aqueduct allowance in the fall of 2021.

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Away seven months and getting a late start to her 2022 campaign, Goodnight Olive swept through all four of her races at 4, starting with allowance romps at Belmont Park and Saratoga, then the Grade 1 Ballerina and Grade 1 BC Filly and Mare Sprint, both with triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures. She won 228 of the 246 first-place Eclipse votes cast in her division.

Tucked away at Brown’s winter base at Payson Park, Goodnight Olive resumed breezing in late January. Her ninth and final work in preparation for the Madison came last Saturday, a half-mile sharpener in 48.80 seconds, after which she arrived here early Monday following the long van ride from Florida.

Brown hasn’t committed to a full schedule for the year, but the obvious goals for Goodnight Olive are repeats in the Ballerina at Saratoga and the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita.

On paper, the Madison should unfold in predictable fashion, with a fresh Society vying for early command with Yuugiri. Ortiz and Goodnight Olive should be waiting right in behind, with Maryquitecontrary and Cocktail Moments gaining late momentum.

Maryquitecontrary (post 5, Luca Panici), just like Goodnight Olive, has won six of seven career starts. The Florida-bred 4-year-old had been trained by Joe Catanese until her owner-breeder, retired Florida veterinarian Rodney Lundock, turned her over to Shug McGaughey several weeks after she won her first graded race, the Grade 2 Inside Information on Pegasus World Cup Day at Gulfstream. There were mitigating circumstances involved in the switch pertaining to a serious injury suffered by Catanese’s brother Ralph in a February bicycling accident near Gulfstream.

Society (post 3, Florent Geroux), just like Goodnight Olive, made her last start in the Breeders’ Cup on Nov. 5, albeit with far different results. The speedy Gun Runner filly, trained by Steve Asmussen, set the pace in the 1 1/8-mile Distaff, only to finish a distant seventh. Before that, she won five of six starts, most notably the Grade 1 Cotillion at Parx Racing in September. She, too, owns a pair of triple-digit Beyers.

Yuugiri (post 4, Ricardo Santana Jr.) should have no excuses breaking outside of the other speed, Society. Recency is in her favor, as she comes off sharp back-to-back wins at Oaklawn Park.

“We’ve got her back on her game now going one turn,” trainer Rudy Brisset said of Yuugiri, a winner of her three sprint starts by a combined 13 lengths.

Cocktail Moments (post 1, Brian Hernandez Jr.) figures as the longest shot in the field and is likely to stretch back out to longer distances as the year unfolds.

The Madison will be run at 4 p.m. Eastern as the seventh of 11 races. It was won last year by Just One Time, ridden by Flavien Prat for Brad Cox. The listed purse includes $100,000 in Kentucky-bred bonuses for which all but Maryquitecontrary are eligible.

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