Higher Truth tops Brown exacta in Sheepshead Bay
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Trainer Chad Brown maintained a stranglehold on the Grade 2 Sheepshead Bay Stakes by sending out Higher Truth and Virginia Joy to a one-two finish in the marathon turf stakes at Belmont Park on Friday.
It was the sixth victory in the Sheepshead Bay - all since 2015 - for Brown.
Last year, Virginia Joy won it for Brown when allowed to get away with dawdling fractions over an extremely boggy turf course. Friday, with the turf labeled good and the rail at 35 feet, it was Higher Truth, under Manny Franco, who got away with seemingly slow fractions - the three-quarter time was posted as 1:23.50 - and was somehow left unchallenged.
“I knew I was going so slow because on paper I knew my filly was faster than the other ones and I said, ‘I’m going to go easy and hopefully she can go all the way around,’ " Franco told the New York Racing Association publicity department. “That’s what she did.”
Atomic Blonde, under Eric Cancel, made a run at Higher Truth at the head of the lane, but Higher Truth opened up and went on to win by 1 3/4 lengths. Virginia Joy rallied to get second by 1 1/2 lengths over Atomic Blonde.
Amazing Grace finished last. Mylady, Brown’s third entrant in the field, was scratched due to a temperature, Brown said.
It was the first stakes victory for Higher Truth, a 5-year-old daughter of Galileo owned by Team Hanley, Jeff Drown, and Michael Ryan. As a 3-year-old, she participated in all three legs of NYRA’s Turf Triple. This was only her third start since October 2021, and her second-place finish to Mylady in the Grade 3 The Very One at Gulfstream came with trouble.
“She had quite a troubled trip last time at Gulfstream, she was pretty banged up, she had staples in one of her hind ankles and missed about 10 days of training,” Brown said. “Once we got her through getting healed up, she got back right back into her work routine.”
Higher Truth returned $4.50 as the favorite. The final time for the about 1 3/8-mile distance was 2:23.57.
Brown, who watched the Sheepshead Bay from Churchill Downs, said both Higher Truth and Virginia Joy would be considered for the Grade 1, $600,000 New York Stakes at Belmont on June 9.
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