SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – If he had only run horses in the Diana Stakes the last 14 years, trainer Chad Brown would have had a nice career in horse racing. From 2010-23, Brown ran 34 horses in the Diana. He had a record of 8-5-9, including 1-2-3 finishes in three of the last five years – he actually ran 1-2-3-4 in 2022. In the Diana alone, Brown’s horses have earned $3.478 million, and four of those Diana winners went on to be crowned champion female turf horse, though Zagora’s championship came in 2012, the year after she won the Diana. Zagora’s Diana in 2011 was Brown’s first career Grade 1 victory. Saturday, in search of his record-extending ninth victory in this race, Brown brings an arsenal of five to the 86th running of the $500,000 Diana, the first Grade 1 of the Saratoga meet. It could be that none of the quintet is favored, but that hasn’t mattered. Brown has started four horses in each of the last two runnings with the his longest shot in the field – Whitebeam at 7-1 last year, In Italian at 8-1 the previous year – winning. Didia, who won the Grade 1 New York Stakes here last month for trainer Ignacio “Nacho” Correas, is likely to go off favored in a deep, competitive field of 10 for the Diana. From an odds perspective, Chili Flag will likely be Brown’s shortest price, perhaps vying for favoritism with Didia. Chili Flag has won three consecutive stakes, including the Grade 1 Just a Game here June 7. All three wins, however, have come at one mile. The Diana is at 1 1/8 miles. :: Gain a competitive edge at Saratoga with DRF's premier handicapping data — purchase our meet packages today and bet with confidence. “I think she’s changed a little bit as she’s gotten older. Her kick seems to be more sustained, if you will,” Brown said. “My feeling is she’s got a bit more range this year. It’s going to come down to her having enough pace in front of her and working out a trip from that 10 hole.” While Chili Flag finished sixth, beaten 2 1/2 lengths by Didia, in the Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf in January, she did encounter traffic on two separate occasions. “It was a sneaky-good race,” Brown said. “I didn’t lose any confidence with her.” Whitebeam won last year’s Diana at 8-1, pressing a relatively soft pace and holding off Brown’s 2022 Diana winner, In Italian, by a nose. In two starts this year, Whitebeam was beaten a neck by Neecie Marie in the Grade 3 Beaugay and a half-length by Chili Flag in the Just a Game. While Brown said Whitebeam has a tendency to hang some, he sees her recent workouts as “the best I’ve seen [from] her this year. Her gallop-outs have been impressive, she looks a picture right now. I’m cautiously optimistic that she’s going to have her best race of the year.” Fluffy Socks is making her 24th stakes appearance and is coming off a dominant 7 3/4-length victory in the Grade 3 Gallorette at Pimlico. She is 0 for 6 in Grade 1 tries, though she may have been an unlucky head loser when second in last December’s Matriarch at Del Mar. “With her, much like Chili Flag, the mile and an eighth is a question mark, though she has won at the distance before early on in her career,” Brown said. “However, it comes down to pace, and when you start to get out to a mile and an eighth you lose a little bit of pace and it might take away from a kick for a horse like this. I’m hopeful the pace is there.” :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. Coppice may have had the most trouble of any of Brown’s runners in the Just a Game, where she finished sixth, beaten two lengths, as the 3-2 favorite. Brown said he was open to dropping her out of Grade 1 competition, but her “works have been fabulous,” he said. “With a lack of options, we’re trying her a mile and an eighth and hoping for a different trip.” Gina Romantica is a Grade 1 winner whose form this year has tailed off. Brown thinks that perhaps her hard race in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Mile against males took more out of her than he thought. Brown noted that historically Gina Romantica’s better races have come in the second half of her campaigns. Didia has been a model of consistency since arriving from Argentina two years ago. She has won 7 of 10 races in the United States, at distances from 1 1/16 miles to 1 1/4 miles. Her lone try at this 1 1/8-mile distance came last year when she captured the Modesty at Churchill Downs. Her victory in last month’s New York here was her first Grade 1 win in North America. “She looked great doing it, but everybody has always been very high on her. We were expecting something like that,” Correas said. “I think the difference [this year] is she’s better at a mile and an eighth, mile and three-sixteenths, mile and a quarter than the mile and a sixteenth, but that’s where we were running her because we didn’t have any place else to go.” :: Access morning workout reports straight from the tracks and get an edge with DRF Clocker Reports Neecie Marie beat Whitebeam in the Beaugay and then rallied from 11th to finish second in the New York at odds of 25-1. “She had to check a couple of times in her last race,” trainer Butch Reid said. “If she gets a good, clean trip, she’s going to be tough to deal with.” Mission of Joy stretches out to 1 1/8 miles after two stakes tries at a mile, including a third, beaten a half-length, in the Grade 1 Just a Game here last month. Trainer Graham Motion is seeking his first win in the Diana, a race in which he’s finished second six times. Moira hasn’t run since she finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf last November. Trainer Kevin Attard acknowledges the degree of difficulty coming off a layoff against this quality of a race. “By the same token, the Breeders’ Cup last fall she ran against a quality field as well,” Attard said. “If we can get back to that form, she should give a good account of herself.” Evvie Jets won the Grade 2 Ballston Spa here last summer at odds of 29-1. She was beaten just three-quarters of a length in the Just a Game at 26-1 here last month. The Diana goes as race 10 on a 12-race card that begins at 12:35 p.m. and includes the Grade 3 Kelso for males at one mile on turf and the Grade 3 Sanford for 2-year-olds on dirt. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.