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Kentucky Downs Hoping for Better News From Graded Stakes Committee

Every year, the Kentucky Downs stakes schedule seems to get richer and attract better horses. This year, there were 16 stakes worth a combined $8.6 million and many were won by horses that could have an impact at the Breeders’ Cup. The stakes schedule is a source of pride among the track’s management team, but also a source of frustration. Only five of the stakes are graded and those are all Grade III events, which the track’s senior vice president and general manager Ted Nicholson called “dumbfounding.”

“It’s frustrating,” Nicholson said. “Graded races are important. It’s not that our races don’t get filled. They do fill and they fill very well. But to attract the top horses, it does help to get higher level graded races.”

A perceived lack of respect from the graded stakes committee has been an issue for years at Kentucky Downs. As recently as 2016, there was only one graded stakes on the schedule, what was then called the GIII Kentucky Cup Turf.

Though Nicholson is hoping the committee will look at all of the Kentucky Downs stakes, there are a couple that he said have been particularly slighted.

“The Tourist Mile is the one that is the most baffling,” he said. “We had a Breeders’ Cup winner come out of there and other horses who have done extraordinarily well.”

The Tourist Mile S. is a $750,000 race that is ungraded. It was renamed after Tourist (Tiznow) went on to win the GI Breeders’ Cup Mile in 2016 after winning what was then known as the More Than Ready Mile S.

The stakes program also includes the $750,000 Gun Runner Dueling Grounds Derby. It and the Tourist Mile are the richest non-restricted stakes races run in North America that are not graded.

Nicholson also wondered how the race now known as the Calumet Farm Kentucky Turf Cup can only be a Grade III event. With a $1 million purse, it is the richest race run at Kentucky Downs. Arklow (Arch) won the race in 2020 and in 2018 and is a Grade I winner. So is 2019 winner Zulu Alpha (Street Cry) {Ire}).

“The Calumet Turf Cup has been won three years in a row now by Grade I winner, it’s a $1 million race and is still a Grade III,” he said. “I don’t know how that can be.”

Kentucky Downs has been able to pour money into its stakes program thanks to the revenue that is accrued from its historical horse racing machines. It may be true that, seven or eight years ago, some top trainers didn’t focus on the meet and the quality of the stakes fields was lacking. But that has changed, and the track now regularly attracts the likes of Bill Mott, Graham Motion, Shug McGaughey, Chad Brown, Mark Casse and Doug O’Neill, as well as Kentucky mainstays like Wesley Ward, Brad Cox and Steve Asmussen.

While the committee has since given graded status to four additional races, Nicholson doesn’t think it has done enough to recognize the quality of racing his track offers.

“Over the last few years we have seen such an enormous response, not only in stakes nominations, but who actually comes,” he said. “Trainers are circling our meet on their calendars and it’s not just all the usual people. We’re seeing guys coming in from all over now, including from California. It really helps when you have a year like this year when the Breeders’ Cup is in Kentucky. They know they can ship in, run here for big money and stick around for the Breeders’ Cup.”

Horses coming out of this year’s Kentucky Downs meet have gone on to win a number of major races around the country, which has Nicholson hoping that better news from the committee is just around the corner.

Harvey’s Lil Goil (American Pharoah) just won the GI Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup after finishing second in the Dueling Grounds Oaks. The winner of that race, Micheline (Bernardini), came back to finish second in the Queen Elizabeth. Ivar (Brz) (Agnes Gold {Jpn}) came back to win the GI Shadwell Turf Mile S. after finishing third in the Tourist Mile. Got Stormy (Get Stormy), Plum Ali (First Samurai) and Royal Approval (Tiznow) have also won graded stakes since racing at this year’s Kentucky Downs meet.

Harvey’s Lil Goil and Ivar became the 32nd and 33rd horses since 2010 that went on to win a Grade I race in North America after racing at Kentucky Downs.

“After seeing the results of our meet and seeing how the runners from our recently concluded meet are performing at Keeneland, Belmont, Pimlico, I really would be surprised and extraordinarily disappointed if we don’t see elevations in some of our graded races and grades for some of our non-graded races,” Nicholson said. “You can look at our whole stakes schedule and look at where those horses have gone and how they have performed and it is amazing. I’m not someone who has a vote. I just have to hope they are seeing the same things that I am.”

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With Anticipation To Remain a Listed Stakes

The Sept. 2 With Anticipation S., rained off the turf at Saratoga and onto the main track, was immediately downgraded from Grade III status and to listed status per the policy of the American Graded Stakes Committee of the Thoroughbred Owner and Breeders Association.

Upon review of the race, the AGSC has determined that the original Grade III status of the With Anticipation will not be reinstated for this renewal. The victorious Fire At Will (Declaration of War) is therefore credited with a listed victory, while Blame The Booze (Blame) and Zippy Baby (Cairo Prince) are credited with listed placings.

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Chad Brown’s First 100 Grade 1 Wins: Individual Management, Imagination Fuel Meteoric Rise

Since 1973, when the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association began designating the best American stakes as Grade 1, 2 or 3, no trainer has won his first 100 Grade 1 races – the sport's most prestigious – faster than Chad Brown.

Brown registered his first Grade 1 victory on July 30, 2011, when Zagora won the Diana at Saratoga. His 100th came less than nine years later, on July 11, 2020, when Guarana won the Madison Stakes at Keeneland. The four-time (2016-'19) Eclipse Award winner as outstanding trainer added his 101st Grade 1 win that same afternoon when Rushing Fall took the Jenny Wiley at Keeneland.

Thirty years earlier, D. Wayne Lukas put the pedal to the metal almost as quickly as Brown would do, winning his first Grade 1 with Codex in the Santa Anita Derby March 30, 1980, and crossing the 100 mark a little over nine years later. Lukas is the all-time leader by Grade 1 wins, with 219, followed by Bob Baffert, who won his first Grade 1 with Thirty Slews in the 1992 Breeders' Cup Sprint. Baffert didn't reach 100 Grade 1s until 2010, although he has been the most productive trainer at the Grade 1 level in the last decade, winning 111 in the U.S. from 2010 until the present. He is second behind Lukas, with 207.

At 41 years old, Brown is the youngest trainer to reach the century mark in Grade 1 victories.

Based on available data compiled from Equibase, only seven trainers have exceeded 100 American Grade 1 victories in their careers.

They are:

Wayne Lukas…219
Bob Baffert…207
Robert Frankel…171
Todd Pletcher…158
Charles Whittingham…138
Shug McGaughey…129
William Mott…122
Chad Brown…101

Caveats: The list does not include Grade/Group 1 victories in Dubai, Europe or Asia. Because Equibase does not list any graded stakes prior to 1976 on trainer profiles, Ron McAnally (with 94 from 1976 to present) may be the ninth trainer to make that list. For the purposes of the above list, stakes results for Charlie Whittingham from 1973-'75 were taken from the Jay Hovdey biography, “Whittingham: The Story of a Thoroughbred Racing Legend,” and added to what Equibase includes on his trainer profile page. Not included are pre-1973 races that would become Grade 1 fixtures once grading of stakes began.

Brown, a native of Mechanicville, N.Y., has come a long way in a short time since saddling his first winner, Dual Jewels, in a $5,000 claiming race at Churchill Downs on Nov. 23, 2007. His first graded stakes winner came in 2008 when Maram won the Grade 3 Miss Grillo. The filly would give Brown his first Breeders' Cup victory later that year while winning the inaugural Juvenile Fillies Turf, a race would that would become a Grade 1 in 2012. It was the first of his 15 Breeders' Cup championship races.

Brown was accustomed to working with Grade 1 winners years before he hung out his shingle as a public trainer, having worked for two Hall of Famers, Shug McGaughey and Bobby Frankel. The latter spent much of his career dominating the claiming ranks, but once he proved what he could do with good horses, there was no looking back. Frankel was voted Eclipse Awards as outstanding trainer five times (1993, 2000-'03) and inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.

Brown was an assistant to Frankel in 2003 when the latter established an all-time record for most Grade 1 victories in a single year: 25.

“It seemed like we were winning Grade 1s every week,” said Brown, who spent time that year with Frankel strings at Hollywood Park in California and Belmont Park in New York. “We had a murderer's row of great horses, and I learned a lot. It was hard to believe all these horses were in the same barn. You try to take it all in, every day. He and Humberto (longtime Frankel assistant Humberto Ascanio) trained you to be so focused on your task every day.

“I remember Frankel carefully managing each horse individually,” Brown said. “It's where I started to learn about managing horses at the top end, how he did it on an individual basis, and recognizing how important it is to do it that way. We were winning Grade 1s on dirt, turf, long, short, male, female, young and very old. It really stuck with me to really pay attention every day, every hour, every minute.

“Bobby was a perfectionist. He set high goals for himself and had an incredible feel for horses and animals in general. The other thing with Bobby that I saw in managing horses was this: Anyone can say I wish I had that guy's or that girl's horses. But when you have them, you find out they're not all easy. With Bobby, when I say I learned so much, the one thing I feel I have in common is imagination. Bobby had an imagination to see into the future, how things were going to turn out. When you train horses at this level, that would be a common trait, that you have an imagination.

“Ghostzapper was not always a great work horse,” Brown said. “Bobby knew that this was the best horse he ever trained. He said it all the time, before that horse became who he was. I couldn't figure it out, not until the Iselin, when he finally showed how good he was.” The Grade 3 Philip H. Iselin, Ghostzapper's eighth career start and his second race at 4 when he was voted Horse of the Year, was followed by Grade 1 victories in 2004 in the Woodward, Breeders' Cup Classic and the 2005 Met Mile.

“I caught him at the perfect time,” Brown said of Frankel. “He had the best horses and he was the smartest trainer. I was a huge beneficiary.”

Fast forward to the present, where Brown has applied the many lessons learned from Frankel, who died in 2009.

“Our system, our roster of horses has been built over time to compete in all categories,” he said. “I want to be able to individually train and manage horses across the board. Frankel was very rare to be able to do that.”

Has Brown set Frankel's single-season record of 25 Grade 1 victories as a goal for his stable?

“I am a goal-oriented person, just conceptually to motivate me and my team to try and get somewhere, not for personal recognition or satisfaction,” he said. “We try to do better than in the previous year. That record did cross my mind the last two years, only because it was Bobby. When we got to the high teens, I thought we had a chance. I always thought this was a record that no one could ever hit, but then I saw a couple of scenarios: if, if, if …”

Each year Brown maxed out at 20 Grade 1 victories.

With all the disruptions to racing in 2020 from the coronavirus pandemic (including several Grade 1 races not being run), it's highly unlikely anyone will approach Frankel's record this year.

But success begets success, and Brown has a steady pipeline of high-end racing prospects and proven imports coming his way from some of the sport's leading owners.

In a sense, he's just getting warmed up.

“I'm lucky to have an amazing team,” said Brown. “We've built a talented roster of teammates, co-workers. It's pretty obvious that it's a team effort.”

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