Structor gives Brown shot at first Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf win

You might think trainer Chad Brown has won every Grade 1 turf race in North America, but there’s at least one that has eluded the formidable reach of the Brown stable. That’s the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, which Brown will have a have a chance to add to his stuffed résumé this fall with the Palace Malice colt Structor.

Brown has a second, three third-place finishes, and a fourth-place finish from a host of Juvenile Turf runners, and Structor will come into this year’s one-mile renewal at Santa Anita with wins in both his starts. Structor won his career debut at Saratoga before capturing the Grade 3 Pilgrim on Sept. 28 at Belmont Park by a neck over Andesite, who also is a likely Juvenile Turf starter, trainer Brad Cox said. Structor is the first foal to race out of Miss Always Ready, whose sister More Than Real won the BC Juvenile Fillies Turf in 2010. Structor was purchased for $160,000 as a yearling and pinhooked at a 2-year-olds in training sale earlier this year for a whopping $850,000. He’s owned by Jeff Drown and Don Rachel, and he got an 82 Beyer Speed Figure winning the Pilgrim by a head.

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The shape of the Juvenile Turf will come into much sharper focus over the next two weeks, and there are prep races this Sunday at Santa Anita, which hosts the Zuma Beach, and at Keeneland, where the Bourbon will be contested. Encoder and Billy Batts lead the California wing of the division right now, but the Bourbon historically has been the more important race vis-à-vis the Juvenile Turf and almost certainly will be again this year. Among the likely runners in the Bourbon, a Win and You’re In for the Juvenile Turf, are Fighting Seabee, winner of the With Anticipation at Saratoga; Cadet Connelly and Vitalogy, second and third in the Grade 1 Summer at Woodbine; and Peace Achieved, winner of the $500,000 Juvenile at Kentucky Downs. Vitalogy ran at Woodbine as an Irish shipper trained by Joseph O’Brien, but has moved into the barn of Kentucky-based trainer Brendan Walsh.

On Sept. 28, Royal Dornoch won the Group 2 Royal Lodge at Newmarket in England, a Win and You’re In for the Juvenile Turf, but trainer Aidan O’Brien stopped well short of committing the colt to Santa Anita, mentioning the Vertem Futurity at Doncaster as an alternative. The Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on Sunday at Longchamp often produces Juvenile Turf runners, but for the most part it remains too early to predict which overseas runners will be aimed at the Breeders’ Cup.