Brown has two shots at seventh straight win in Sweetest Chant Stakes
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It’s another indicator of the depth in the Chad Brown barn. The two-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer could keep a remarkable streak alive Saturday in the Sweetest Chant Stakes at Gulfstream Park, even when leaving Rushing Fall in her stall.
Rushing Fall, the undefeated sensation who was a 2017 Eclipse finalist in the 2-year-old filly division, won’t make her seasonal debut until sometime this spring. But that still might not be enough to keep Brown from winning the Grade 3, $100,000 Sweetest Chant for an amazing seventh straight time.
Brown has two top contenders in the 22nd Sweetest Chant in Data Dependent and Salsa Bella, who are drawn alongside one another in posts 4 and 5 for the one-mile turf race. They’re among nine 3-year-olds in the filly counterpart to the Grade 3, $100,000 Dania Beach, for 3-year-olds, with the Sweetest Chant carded as race 6 (post, 2:30 p.m. Eastern) and the Dania Beach as race 11 (5:16).
Data Dependent, with Javier Castellano to ride, most recently ran second in the Grade 3 Jimmy Durante at Del Mar in late November and has been working right along at the Palm Meadows training center.
Salsa Bella will have Irad Ortiz Jr. up and gets Lasix in her North American debut following a victory in her native France in September in her lone start. She, too, shows a series of sharp Palm Meadows drills.
“Both are training well,” Brown said. “We gave Data Dependent a brief freshening after her last race at Del Mar and she looks well. This is Salsa Bella’s first race for us, and although it’s a tough race for her to make her first start here in the U.S., I do like the distance and timing of this race for her.”
Brown won his first of six straight runnings of the Sweetest Chant in 2012 with Dayatthespa, who was followed by Premier Steps (2013), Ready to Act (2014), Consumer Credit (2015), Pricedtoperfection (2016), and Rymska (2017).
Foremost among the fillies looking to halt the Brown streak are Thewayiam (post 1, Jose Ortiz) and Cash Out (post 3, Nik Juarez). Thewayiam’s victory here four weeks ago in the Ginger Brew for trainer Graham Motion followed an 11th-place finish in the Jimmy Durante, and Cash Out was third behind Rushing Fall in the Grade 3 Jessamine at Keeneland in October for Rusty Arnold.
The connections of Untamed Domain, the heavy favorite for the 10th running of the Dania Beach, will be straying from convention after Saturday when they move the colt onto the Kentucky Derby trail in either the March 10 Tampa Bay Derby or March 24 Louisiana Derby, assuming all goes well in the Dania Beach.
“It’s something that has interested us for some time,” said Motion, who trains Untamed Domain for West Point Thoroughbreds.
Jose Ortiz will be aboard Untamed Domain, who breaks from post 6 in a field of 10 3-year-old colts. In his last of five starts, all on turf, Untamed Domain rallied strongly to finish just a length shy of Mendelssohn in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf on Nov. 3 at Del Mar.
“We gave him a little break after the Breeders’ Cup, and he’s come back to do very well for us at Palm Meadows,” Motion said.
If Untamed Domain shows a little rust and is upset, the Dania Beach could fall any number of ways. The previous local race in this division, the Jan. 6 Kitten’s Joy, resulted in an absolute scramble, with less than two lengths separating the entire field of seven. None of the nine colts opposing Untamed Domain has won a graded race, with Speed Franco (post 1, Emisael Jaramillo) being the only rival to have won so much as an ungraded turf stakes.