Brown looks set to resume Just a Game dominance
ELMONT, N.Y. – You follow North American Thoroughbred racing. You know trainer Chad Brown annually is loaded with high-class turf fillies and mares. And you probably have a decent sense that Brown is having an especially good season in that category. But the actual cold, hard stats just might blow your mind.
So far in 2022, outside of California there have been 15 graded turf stakes for older fillies and mares run over a route of ground. Brown started a horse in 11 of those – and won every . . . single . . . one.
Eight different horses have combined to win the Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf, the Endeavour, the Honey Fox, the The Very One, the Hillsborough, the Jenny Wiley, the Modesty, the Sheepshead Bay, the Distaff Turf Mile, the Beaugay, and the Gallorette.
There’s more. In five of the races, Brown had two entrants and four times his “other” horse finished second. So, among 16 runners, only Lemista, fourth in the Beaugay, failed to achieve the highest possible placing for Brown in those graded turf stakes.
And if you think Brown isn’t going to add to the unbelievable numbers Saturday in the Grade 1, $500,000 Just a Game, for older fillies and mares at one mile on turf, you haven’t yet looked at the past performances.
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Brown won the Just a Game, run around one turn, four years in a row, between 2017 and 2020, before Godolphin’s Althiqa snapped his streak last year. Saturday, Brown will have by far the three shortest prices in just a five-runner field in Speak of the Devil, Regal Glory, and In Italian. California shipper Leggs Galore and Wakanaka are the only two opposing Brown’s juggernaut. Peter Brant owns all three Brown runners; the Just a Game is named after Brant’s champion turf filly of 1980.
Leggs Galore drew the rail and clearly is going to the lead under California-based jockey Ricky Gonzalez. Leggs Galore’s best is to set a fast pace and run this field off their feet, as she did in her most important win, the Grade 2 Buena Vista, a two-turn mile on March 22.
“Ricky Gonzalez gets along with her very well, knows what she can and can’t do,” said trainer Phil D’Amato, who would prefer firm going. “Her best asset is her speed. We’re going to use it and see how far it gets us.”
Irish-bred Italian import Wakanaka has lost to at least one Brown horse in all three of her 2021 starts. She was second to In Italian in the Honey Fox and third to Speak of the Devil and In Italian in the Distaff Turf Mile.
Realistically, it’s not a question of if Brown will win the Just a Game, but which Brown will win the Just a Game. Asked about competing mainly against himself Saturday, Brown replied, “Where am I gonna go?”
French import Speak of the Devil, ridden by Flavien Prat, will be all the rage following her North American debut in the Distaff Turf Mile at Churchill Downs. No doubt, that was an awesome performance. Last going into the far turn, Speak of the Devil was first coming out of it. She clocked 23.73 for the quarter-mile around the turn, 1.17 seconds faster than pacesetter and eventual runner-up In Italian, then blistered her final quarter-mile in 22.85, easily the race’s fastest closing fraction.
Factors worth noting: Speak of the Devil, a 5-year-old, nearly won the Group 1 French 1000 Guineas in 2020 and was a very close third in the Group 1 Prix Rothschild last summer, but the Distaff Turf Mile marked her first win in a group or graded race. The mare clearly thrived on the tight Churchill course, something she’d never experienced before and won’t Saturday. And while Churchill called its course firm, many people with runners on the day said the grass was wet, slick, and difficult for many horses to handle – In Italian among them.
“In Italian, she didn’t care for that loose ground like Speak of the Devil did,” Brown said.
In Italian, 9-2 on the morning line, easily will be the longest price among the Brown-trained trio, and she feels like the right Just a Game play, provided there’s minimal rain. Just a 4-year-old with a 5-3-2-0 record, In Italian should sit second behind Leggs Galore and get first run on her stablemates. Brown effused over her team workout Sunday with high-class older male Masen.
“She was a half-length off him but under a strong hold,” he said. “In Italian on firm turf is a quality horse.” Jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., who rides Saturday, “has come back after her last two works and said this is a different horse on this course.”
Six-year-old Regal Glory didn’t appear to be top class until last year. Now she’s won three races in a row, two at the Grade 1 level, and has become “a real force in the division,” Brown said. Regal Glory might simply be better now than when she finished fourth in the last two Just a Games, but it’s worth considering that her style might better suit two-turn races than this one-turn contest.
As for North America’s runaway leading trainer of female grass horses? That one’s no contest.