Keep Quiet extends Casse's hot hand by taking Bourbon Stakes
LEXINGTON, Ky. - If you're a Casse, the future looks so bright that you ought to wear shades.
Keep Quiet won the Grade 3, $250,000 Bourbon Stakes Sunday afternoon at Keeneland, giving trainer Mark Casse's operation its fourth graded stakes win with a 2-year-old in 24 hours.
One day prior at Keeneland, Classic Empire captured the Grade 1 Breeders' Futurity. Earlier Sunday afternoon, Golden Hawk won the Grade 3 Grey Stakes at Woodbine, where on Saturday, stablemates Gale Force and Let It Ride Mom went one-two in the Grade 3 Mazarine Stakes. Casse also conditions Grade 1-winning 2-year-old fillies Victory to Victory and Pretty City Dancer.
"It's kind of like a dream come true," said Norman Casse, Mark Casse's son and top assistant. "We've always wanted to be in this position. A lot of people have worked really hard for a really long time, and it's all paying off now."
Keep Quiet ($10), a French-bred son of Elusive City, has now won twice from five career starts, and earned an automatic berth into the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita with his Bourbon victory. After finishing unplaced in his first two career starts sprinting at Belmont Park, Keep Quiet stretched out to two turns on the Saratoga turf, and the colt responded by winning his maiden by 5 1/4 lengths, and then running a good second in the Grade 2 With Anticipation Stakes.
"He had trained really well when they first got him here to Keeneland, so he was a little bit of a head-scratcher," Norman Casse said. "We got him up to Saratoga and routed him on the grass, and that's obviously what he wants to do."
Keep Quiet, who broke from post 5 under Florent Geroux in a full field of 14 2-year-olds, drafted in third as Cold Snack Thirty and All Right took the field through an honest opening half-mile of 47.78 seconds. Geroux tipped his mount out on the far turn and poked a head in front in upper stretch. Ticonderoga, sent away as the favorite for the red-hot Chad Brown barn after an impressive maiden score at Belmont last month, made a furious rally from seventh, but Keep Quiet held sway in the final stages to win by 1 1/4 lengths.
After Keep Quiet and Ticonderoga came Bird’s Eye View, another half-length back in third. The final time for the 1 1/16 miles over a course rated firm was 1:44.92.
Geroux piloted I’m a Chatterbox to victory in the Grade 1 Spinster Stakes about a half-hour later, giving him a stakes double and three victories on the day overall.