Brown duo to battle Walsh pair in Jenny Wiley

An odd thing happened last year in the Jenny Wiley Stakes: Chad Brown didn’t train the winner.

Brown had won three straight Jenny Wileys, six out of seven, and seven of 10, and in truth, he probably should have won last year. Excellent Truth finished second by a half-length to Choisya, who hampered her in the stretch run.

An odd thing coming into Saturday’s renewal of the Grade 1, $650,000 Jenny Wiley, carded for 1 1/16 miles: Brown with 11 starters has not yet won a turf stakes this year. Brown targets spring, summer, and fall grass stakes, not winter races, and has led all North American trainers in turf stakes victories – often by a massive margin – every year since 2014. Still, at this point the last three years, Brown had won five, five, and four such races.

He has two chances Saturday, Segesta and Dynamic Pricing, to get on the scoreboard. To do so, he must beat another double-handed trainer, Brendan Walsh, who sends live chances in Lush Lips and to a lesser extent Expensive Queen. Walsh as of Thursday had eight turf stakes winners this year, tops among North American trainers.

Eight different horses have captured those eight stakes: Lush Lips cashed out in the Honey Fox at Gulfstream Park, Expensive Queen the Albert Stall Memorial at Fair Grounds. While Expensive Queen has run her way into this Grade 1 chance with two sharp wins this year, the Jenny Wiley all year has stood as the main early goal for Lush Lips, whose best win came six months ago at Keeneland in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup.

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Lush Lips makes her third start since William and Donna’s Shively’s Dixiana Farm bought her for $3.7 million from the partnership that raced her twice in Ireland and eight times in North America. The first two starts went swimmingly, wins last November in the Mrs. Revere at Churchill Downs and in the Honey Fox.

Lush Lips’s superiority in the Honey Fox exceeded her three-quarter-length margin of victory. She ran her last quarter-mile in 21.90 seconds and got her final furlong somewhere around 10.75.

Walsh has done great work with this horse. Beaten more than 18 lengths at Kentucky Downs in September 2024 while racing for her Irish trainer, Donnacha O’Brien, Lush Lips improved in six straight starts last season, all while Walsh transformed her from a speedy front-running type to a filly perfectly comfortable coming from midpack, as she did in the Honey Fox. With little speed entered Saturday, expect her to race prominently under Tyler Gaffalione.

Expensive Queen, another Irish import, overcame such adversity last April winning her North American debut, a Keeneland allowance, that connections immediately gave her a shot in the Grade 1 Gamely at Santa Anita. Expensive Queen, however, battled hoof problems at the time, and to make matters worse, smashed her head on the starting gate just before the Gamely began.

She didn’t race between May and January, but in both her comeback start, a Tapeta allowance race at Gulfstream, and in the Stall, Expensive Queen traveled like a winner a long way from home. She brings an excellent turn of foot, but will be tested for class here. Luis Saez, who knows the mare well, breaks her from the rail.

A slight chance of Saturday rain provides a glimmer of added hope for the Brown-trained Dynamic Pricing, whose career-best came over a sodden Saratoga course winning the Grade 1 Just a Game. She ran well, if not up to her Just a Game level, in two subsequent starts before a flat seventh in the Grade 1 First Lady in October.

“She definitely prefers a little cut in the ground,” Brown said. “She didn’t fire last time out, but that was the end of her season.”

Segesta stands a better chance, though she and Flavien Prat must cope with a poor draw, post 10. Five-year-old Segesta improved throughout her 4-year-old campaign, capturing her first Grade 1, the Matriarch, in her season’s finale.

“She’s top quality, training excellent,” Brown said.

Destino d’Oro wasn’t training quite like her normal self when she finished eighth in the QE II, and since has won three Florida stakes. Steadied back nearly to last going to the three-eighths pole in the Hillsborough last out, she still got up.

“She had no business winning that race,” trainer Brad Cox said.

Aussie Girl becomes a broodmare after the Jenny Wiley, where she could prove the controlling speed.

“The way she’s worked in Florida and at Keeneland, she’s as good now as she’s been the two and a half years we’ve had her,” trainer Will Walden said.

Fast Market, Medoro, Pin Up Betty, and Deep Satin complete the Jenny Wiley. Brown or Walsh figure to win it.

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