Brown has pocket rockets for First Lady

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Imagine having a top-class filly-mare turf runner in this day and age. You, as owner or trainer, have been reveling in her accomplishments, her progress, and her recent training moves when entering her for her next race.

And then you pick up the overnight, and there’s Chad Brown with a couple of monsters.

Such is life in American racing, where Brown casts a formidable shadow wherever major events for fillies and mares are run over grass. Brown will be represented Saturday at Keeneland by the powerful duo of Rushing Fall and Uni when a full gate of 14 goes postward in the Grade 1, $400,000 First Lady.

The one-mile First Lady is a Win and You’re In event toward the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf, which will be run at 1 1/4 miles on Nov. 2 at Santa Anita. The First Lady goes as the eighth of 11 races, with post time set for 5:04 p.m. Eastern.

Rushing Fall, owned by the eFive Racing Thoroughbreds of Bob Edwards and family, literally has been unbeatable over the Keeneland turf. The daughter of More Than Ready has gone 4 for 4 in racking up graded stakes victories in the 2017 Jessamine, the 2018 Appalachian, the 2018 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup, and the 2019 Jenny Wiley. An overall winner in eight of 10 starts, the 4-year-old filly surely will be favored breaking from post 11 under regular rider Javier Castellano.

Uni (post 4, Joel Rosario), a late-running British-bred mare, will be making the third start in her form cycle after ending last year with a victory in the Grade 1 Matriarch at Del Mar. A comeback victory in an ungraded turf stakes in late June at Belmont Park was followed by a run against the boys in the Aug. 10 Fourstardave at Saratoga, where she was third as the favorite behind another filly, Got Stormy.

“Both horses have been training very well here in New York,” Brown said this week by phone from his Belmont Park base. “Obviously their running styles complement one another. Rushing Fall usually shows very good speed and Uni does her best from the back.”

Brown has been the trainer of four of the last seven Eclipse Award winners in this division, including Sistercharlie, the 2018 champion who is the favorite for the 2019 BC Filly-Mare Turf. Brown has two prior wins in the First Lady, with Dayatthespa (2014) and A Raving Beauty (2018).

If Brown is to somehow be denied, the most likely upsetter would be the California invader Vasilika (post 6, Flavien Prat), who has enjoyed a breakthrough season in winning five graded turf stakes on her home circuit for Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer, the most recent being the Grade 2 John C. Mabee at Del Mar.

Other contenders in an exceptionally deep lineup include two more British-breds, Juliet Foxtrot and Indian Blessing.

Juliet Foxtrot (post 3, Florent Geroux), a Juddmonte Farms homebred who made her first eight starts in England or Ireland, would be unbeaten in four U.S. starts if not for getting nipped on the wire by Vasilika in the Aug. 31 Mabee.

“That was such a tough beat for us,” said trainer Brad Cox. “But the filly has come back to train really well. Hopefully this will be our ticket to the Breeders’ Cup, where the longer distance might be a little more in her favor.”

Fringe players in this 22nd running of the First Lady include Awesometank, also a British-bred, the runner-up in the Grade 1 Beverly D. behind Sistercharlie, as well as the respective 1-2-3-4 finishers four weeks ago in the Kentucky Downs Ladies Turf – Ms Bad Behavior, Mitchell Road, Simply Breathless, and Storm Hill.

Rounding out the cast are Conquesthardcandy, Marina’s Legacy, Just Wonderful, and Hanalei Moon.

A fifth Keeneland stakes victory by Rushing Fall would still be two short of the record held by Wise Dan, the two-time Horse of the Year who won seven stakes here from 2010 to 2014. Take Charge Lady is the only other horse to have won as many as four Keeneland stakes in the track’s 83-year history.