Leader of the Band gets another challenge from Brown barn
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Trainer John Servis was bullish on Leader of the Band’s chances when the mare made her 2023 debut in the $102,000 Serena’s Song Stakes on May 14 at Monmouth Park. Leader of the Band ran a winning race, her 92 Beyer Speed Figure among the best of her 18-start career – and she still lost. A Chad Brown-trained filly named Distinctlypossible stepped up from a first-level allowance race and boosted her Beyer from 80 to 94, beating Leader of the Band by 1 1/4 lengths.
Here we go again in the $100,000 Lady’s Secret Stakes on Saturday at Monmouth. Leader of the Band on paper easily is the most likely winner of the Lady’s Secret, for older fillies and mares over 1 1/16 miles on dirt, but here comes Brown with Signal From Noise, exiting a first-level allowance win and probably capable of stepping up with something better in her stakes debut.
Brown has a second entrant, Gerrymander, who was entered Wednesday without a rider named. Samy Camacho, riding first call for the Brown barn at Monmouth, has the call on Signal From Noise. Gerrymander won the Mother Goose last June at Belmont with a 98 Beyer, a radical outlier in a 10-start career that has otherwise yielded a top figure of 83. Gerrymander does have pace and if she starts will be a more forward factor than Signal From Noise.
Four-year-old Signal From Noise didn’t debut until September of her 3-year-old season but has shown ability from the start. She was second in her first and third starts – finishing behind the talented Todd Pletcher-trained New York-bred Classy Edition third time out – while winning her second and most recent start, the fourth of her career. That race came March 10 at Gulfstream Park, where Signal From Noise moved sharply midway around the far turn and sustained her run to the wire to post a 1 3/4-length victory.
The Gulfstream win, like all of Signal From Noise’s starts, came in a one-turn mile, and the filly tries two turns for the first time Saturday. Her sire, the late Arrogate, is very much a source of American dirt stamina, though Signal From Noise’s dam, Holiday Soiree, and all her offspring to race preferred one turn to two.
Leader of the Band has gone 2-2-0 from five Monmouth starts, including a victory in last year’s Lady’s Secret. She led in the Serena’s Song but looks like a mare better off with a target in front of her.
On paper, the only other plausible winner is Shotgun Hottie, who fell too far off the pace before rallying mildly for third in the Serena’s Song.
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