Brown brings Collect the Data back, looks to get Garamond back on track
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Trainer Chad Brown will be looking for his filly Collect the Data to resume her winning ways while hoping Garamond can regain his best form in separate allowance races that highlight Sunday’s eight-race card at Aqueduct.
In race 3, a conditioned allowance/optional $75,000 claiming event for females at one mile, Brown brings the New York-bred Collect the Data back to the races following a three-month layoff. Collect the Data will be looking for a third consecutive victory and fifth from her last six starts. This, after she had to drop down to the maiden $40,000 claiming level to get her first win.
“We gave her a bunch of time off last winter. When she came back and ran at Saratoga, she really picked our head up, she did a 180 from where she was the previous year,” Brown said.
In November, Collect the Data trounced New York-bred second-level company by six lengths then came back five weeks later to defeat first-level open company by 7 1/2 lengths. She won both races at a mile and did it while racing on the pace.
Brown said this most recent layoff is because “there wasn’t a race for her.”
In Sweetest Princess and Always Angels, Linda Rice sends out two of Collect the Data’s five challengers. Sweetest Princess comes off a stalking victory in a New York-bred second-level allowance, a race from which the runner-up, Fast and Frisky, came back to win her next start with a career-best 84 Beyer Speed Figure.
Always Angels enters this race off an 8 1/4-length win against $50,000 claimers after Rice claimed her for $40,000 at Churchill Downs last November.
Cupid’s Heart finished fourth in an allowance/optional claimer on Jan. 22 from which the first- and second-place finishers, With the Angels and Twirling Beauty, both came back to win, as did last-place finisher Nilo’s Rose.
In race 6, Brown sends out Garamond in a second-level allowance/optional $75,000 claimer going 6 1/2 furlongs.
Garamond, a 4-year-old son of Uncle Mo, won his debut at 6 1/2 furlongs at Tampa in January 2025 and then finished third in the Grade 3 Gotham. After defeating the highly-regarded Cornucopian in a three-horse allowance field going a mile last April, Garamond finished sixth in the Pegasus at Monmouth and last in the Grade 2 Amsterdam at Saratoga, race in which he was eased.
Garamond returned in a second-level allowance going a mile and 40 yards on Feb. 19 at Tampa but could only manage a dead heat for second.
“I haven’t been able to really get this horse in the right races,” Brown said. “I didn’t want to run him two turns off a layoff, but I was struggling to find a race to my liking. I ran him at Tampa because he had success there, but he just didn’t perform well around two turns. He trained better than he ran.”
Brown said he’d prefer to run Garamond a little longer than 6 1/2 furlongs, but “I have to take what’s there.”
Rice has two entered in this spot as well. Ranger Battalion, coming off a first-level allowance win going a mile, shortens up to a distance at which he has twice won. Sacrosanct, the New York-bred 2-year-old champion colt of 2024, is coming off a win going six furlongs Feb. 21.
Toxic Gray is in this spot after finishing second, 7 3/4 lengths behind Ignite the Light, in a Feb. 4 allowance.
◗ Manny Franco, the leading rider at the Aqueduct winter meet, will miss Sunday’s card serving a one-day suspension issued by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority for a whip violation. Franco was deemed to have hit Spirit of Esther eight times with his crop, two more than allowed by rule in the fifth race on Feb. 19, a $12,500 claimer in which Spirit of Esther was beaten a nose.
Franco, who had 41 wins at the meet entering Friday’s card, also was fined $250.
Gokhan Kocakaya missed Thursday’s card for a similar whip violation on Shoot the Nickel, whom he hit seven times in winning the sixth race on Feb. 26 by a nose. He was fined $500.
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