Court to ride Take Charge Brandi for Martha Washington

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Jon Court has the mount on Take Charge Brandi in the $100,000 Martha Washington at Oaklawn on Jan. 31, trainer D. Wayn Lukas said Tuesday. The one-mile race will be the 3-year-old debut for Take Charge Brandi, who last Saturday was named champion 2-year-old filly of 2014. She became the 26th champion trained by Lukas, closing out her year with wins in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, the Delta Downs Princess, and the Starlet at Los Alamitos.

“I’ve always said championships are won in the fall, never in the spring,” Lukas said. “It’s very rare, unless you’re a Derby, Triple Crown winner, that you can sew up a championship in June.

“We’re talking a 2-year-old season. Now, if you’re going towards a championship a 2-year-old should be going through a learning process in the spring, be [building] some kind of form in mid-summer, and then driving for a championship in the fall. It’s just like these football teams – they need to come along at the right time.

“So what we’ve done with Take Charge Brandi, we found out she had that brilliance early, then found out we had to do some things different with her in the summer, then we decided in the fall that we got her number, so to speak, and we took that run at a championship. You hope it all comes together.”

Take Charge Brandi races for Willis Horton of Marshall, Ark.