Kathryn the Wise continues to dominate in Critical Eye

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Kathryn the Wise was late getting her career started, but she has proven to be more than worth the wait as Monday, in her stakes debut, she rolled to an 8 1/4-length victory in the $200,000 Critical Eye Stakes for New York-bred fillies and mares at Belmont Park.

The win was the third in as many starts for Kathryn the Wise, a 4-year-old daughter of Uncle Mo owned and bred by Lawrence Goichman and trained by Chad Brown. She won her career debut by 5 1/2 lengths at Aqueduct last November and then won a first-level New York-bred allowance race by 12 lengths on April 5, also at Aqueduct.

“She had some issues as a young horse where we stopped on her and let her get over them,” Brown said. “Mr Goichman’s very patient and he’s owned horses for a long time. He knows the game, he gave the horse plenty of time and gave her the best care and sent her back to us in outstanding shape and here she is. She has so much talent and a real pleasure to have in the barn.”

Monday, breaking from the outside post in the 11-horse field, Kathryn the Wise pulled jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. to the front and she raced outside of Big Mara and Play Me a Memory through an opening quarter of 22.62 seconds. Kathryn the Wise cleared the other pace challengers after a half-mile in 46.36 seconds and then opened up. Ortiz slapped Kathryn the Wise a couple of times on the shoulder coming through the lane but she won basically in hand.

“She just broke and put me there, it’s not like I’m chasing her, I let her be there and I don’t fight too much with her,” Ortiz said. “I just hold her together, she changed leads, and she just relaxed the second part of the race.”

Kathryn the Wise covered the one mile over a sealed sloppy track in 1:38.70 and returned $3.30 as the 3-5 favorite.

Brown said he was fine with Kathryn the Wise being up on the pace, especially over a sloppy track.

“I didn’t want to put her in a position where she was getting a lot of slop in her face and she had a terrific post position to do that and Irad executed it perfectly,” Brown said. “She might have went a little quick the first quarter, but then he really settled her down that second quarter and she had plenty left as you could see.”

Brown said he would look to Kathryn the Wise against open company at some point