Brown sending out top three choices in First Lady

LEXINGTON, Ky. – It’s happened before, and surely it’ll happen again. It’s just a matter of whether Saturday is the next time for Chad Brown to sweep the top three placings in a major turf race for fillies and mares.

Brown has the top three favorites – exactly half of a six-horse field – in the Grade 1, $750,000 First Lady, part of a sensational 11-race card at Keeneland. The four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer will be represented by Technical Analysis, In Italian, and Regal Glory when they break from posts 3, 4, and 5, respectively, in the one-mile turf race around two turns. Remarkably, Brown will be gunning for his fifth straight win, and sixth overall, in the First Lady.

The First Lady, unlike most of the other FallStars stakes here this weekend, is not a Win and You’re In event toward the Breeders’ Cup, which is set for Nov. 4-5 at Keeneland. Brown is pointing Regal Glory to a matchup versus males in the BC Mile, while Technical Analysis and In Italian would be stretching back out if they advance to the 1 3/16-mile BC Filly and Mare Turf.

Regal Glory, with Jose Ortiz riding, is the most accomplished of the Brown trio, having accounted for three Grade 1 victories within the last year while running her career bankroll past $2.2 million. Her owner, Peter Brant, seriously contemplated retiring her earlier this year, but after she was an easy winner of the Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf at Gulfstream Park in January, Brant went ahead and assented to a full 6-year-old campaign. She now has earned triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures in five of her last six races.

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“Keeping her in training was Mr. Brant’s call,” Brown said. “Clearly, it was the right one.”

Regal Glory, the 6-5 morning-line favorite, owns the kind of stretch kick that would seem to fit the race shape of the 25th First Lady. Technical Analysis, with Flavien Prat riding, and In Italian, with Joel Rosario, both are 4-year-old fillies with multiple graded wins to their credit, but they’ll need to stay out of each other’s way as the race unfolds. If not, Regal Glory could come rolling past them both.

Technical Analysis, owned by the Klaravich Stables of Seth Klarman, swept the Lake George and Lake Placid at Saratoga last year at 3 before finishing second here last October in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup to her Brown stablemate, Shantisara. She has been first or second in all four starts this year, the latest a front-running score in the Grade 2 Ballston Spa at Saratoga with a career-high 101 Beyer.

In Italian, owned by Brant, also led throughout when getting a career-best 102 Beyer in her last race, the Grade 1 Diana at Saratoga, although her 8-1 odds that day might suggest she was overachieving.

An all-Chad trifecta has become somewhat routine in recent years. He did it here in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley in April 2018, and he’s also done it in major filly-mare turf races at Saratoga, Belmont Park, Gulfstream Park, and Arlington Park. He even took his domination one step farther in July, when In Italian led a 1-2-3-4 sweep in the Diana.

The three opponents for the Brown team Saturday are Vigilantes Way (post 1, Paco Lopez), Princess Grace (post 2, Florent Geroux), and Market Rumor (post 6, Chris Landeros). Of those, Princess Grace probably rates the best upset chance, given her 7-for-13 career record and a couple of sharp recent efforts when second in the Grade 1 Beverly D. and Grade 3 Kentucky Downs Ladies Turf.

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Brown, who has won the Filly and Mare Turf a record four times, previously has used the First Lady as a springboard to Breeders’ Cup success. He won both races in 2014 with Dayatthespa, whose BC victory at Santa Anita came at 1 1/4 miles. It was the identical move that Brown’s mentor, the late Bobby Frankel, used in 2005, when Intercontinental went wire-to-wire in the First Lady (then known as the WinStar Galaxy) before also leading throughout 20 days later when going 1 1/4 miles at Belmont Park.

“That kind of thing obviously can work if you have the right horse and circumstances,” Brown said.

After Dayatthespa, Brown’s other First Lady winners were A Raving Beauty (2018), Uni (2019-20), and Blowout (2021). The English-bred Uni twice ran in the BC Mile following the First Lady, winning at Santa Anita in 2019 and finishing fifth here in 2020 to end a 22-race career.

The First Lady is the eighth of 11 Saturday races, with post time set for 4:42 p.m. Eastern.

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