Fresh off a yet another win in the GI Toyota Blue Grass S. at Keeneland, trainer Chad Brown joined the TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland to offer up insight on Sierra Leone's definitive victory and share how he hopes to see the $2.3-million son of Gun Runner progress from here. Brown was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week.
While Sierra Leone's come-from-behind Blue Grass win was one of the more visually impressive Kentucky Derby preps of the year, the race left plenty of room for improvement for the colt going forward when he proved to be a handful for the Keeneland gate crew while loading.
“As the pace was moving along at a solid rate and I saw the horse moving up down the backside, I felt pretty good,” Brown said. “The only anxious moment was when he was loading into the gate. I didn't see that coming. He's been a pretty straightforward horse. When we inherited the outside post with the 11 scratching, he was the last one to load in there… and he just kept looking at that crowd. It's been something with this horse, he always kind of wants to look right. You know, you saw in the GII Remsen S. when he was kind of acting green, and he still wants to lean in a little bit when he passed that horse on Saturday.”
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Saturday's win marked Brown's third Blue Grass score, following the success of juvenile champion Good Magic (Curlin) in 2018 and Zandon (Upstart) in 2022. That pair went on to run second and third, respectively, in the GI Kentucky Derby. Brown said that he believes Sierra Leone will give him his best shot to date to get that first Derby score.
“This horse really looks like he's looking for the mile and a quarter,” said Brown. “Yes he's going to have to pass a lot of horses, but it looks like it'll be a good pace and hopefully if he can just get a clear run and uses his big stride, he would be the best chance we've had in this race.”
Later in our breeding spotlight section, we took a look at the Coolmore stallion Maximum Security and WinStar stallion Independence Hall. We also welcomed a new sponsor, Pleasant Acres Stallions in Ocala, Florida, which is home to stallions like Doppelganger and Simplification.
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association and XBTV.com, the team of Randy Moss, Bill Finley and T.D. Thornton took a look back at the major Kentucky Derby and Oaks preps from coast to coast, from Leslie's Rose (Into Mischief) earning a breakout victory in the GI Ashland S. to the showdown between Stronghold (Ghostzapper) and Imagination (Into Mischief) in the GI Santa Anita Derby.
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