Concrete Rose likely to target Edgewood

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It won’t be long now before Rusty Arnold gets home to Kentucky, but his latest stable star, Concrete Rose, probably won’t be racing at the Keeneland spring meet.

“As much as I like running at Keeneland, I’m probably going to wait until the race on Oaks Day,” Arnold said this week from his Palm Meadows winter base, referring to the Edgewood Stakes on the May 3 Kentucky Oaks undercard at Churchill Downs.

Concrete Rose won the Grade 3 Florida Oaks last Saturday on the Tampa Bay Downs turf course, making her 3 for 4 in a nascent career already filled with highlights. After winning on the Saratoga turf in her career debut, the Twirling Candy filly captured the Grade 2 Jessamine at Keeneland prior to fading to eighth behind Newspaperofrecord in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Churchill.

After fighting off a series of challenges in the Florida Oaks, her first start in more than four months, Concrete Rose was “a little tired from all the shipping and everything,” Arnold said. “But she beat some pretty nice fillies in there, and we’re very happy with her.”

Chad Brown has targeted the Grade 3, $250,000 Edgewood as the likely return spot for Newspaperofrecord, who was a 2018 Eclipse Award finalist in the 2-year-old filly division after going unchallenged in three starts, all turf. Arnold acknowledged the prospect of facing Newspaperofrecord is a challenging one.

“She dominated everything last year, so we’ll go in there with great respect for her,” he said. “She’s by far the best [3-year-old turf] filly in the country, so we might as well find out where we stand.”

Concrete Rose was purchased for $61,000 last May at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale at Timonium by the Ashbrook Farm of Glenn Bromagen and his son, Bo, both of whom were in from Kentucky for the Florida Oaks. Ashbrook maintained a controlling interest in the filly when BBN Racing, a sizable ownership group founded by Brian Klatsky and Brendan O’Brien, bought into her following the Saratoga maiden win.

“I was afraid I was going to lose her,” said Arnold, referring to numerous inquiries for a private purchase. “But [fellow trainer] Phil Oliver stepped in [on behalf of BBN Racing] and got a deal done so that everybody was happy.”

BBN stands for “Big Blue Nation,” which is what University of Kentucky sports fans have labeled themselves, but Klatsky said the syndicate partners actually are from Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, and beyond.

“The partnership is mostly a means to introduce sports fans in general to the great sport of racing,” Klatsky said.

Arnold said he will nominate Concrete Rose to the April 7 Appalachian on the Keeneland turf, “but unless the filly tells me she’s raring to go, we’ll skip it in all likelihood,” he said.