Risen Star Stakes | Horse Racing Free Tips

In Sierra Leone, Brown May Have Best Chance Yet to Win a Derby

Chad Brown's barn includes a lot of fillies and is dominated by turf horses, which makes winning the GI Kentucky Derby more challenging than it is for trainers like Todd Pletcher, Brad Cox and Bob Baffert, who seem to have an almost endless supply of ammunition. The future Hall of Famer has started just seven horses in the Derby and the best he has to show for it is a second-place finish in 2018 with Good Magic (Curlin). But that doesn't mean the right horse won't come his way, and this year may be the year.

Brown may have the favorite in Saturday's GII Risen Star S. at Fair Grounds in 'TDN Rising Star' Sierra Leone (Gun Runner), who checks a lot of boxes. Sold for $2.3 million, he was the sales topper at the 2022 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Sale and has since given every indication that he can compete at the highest level of the sport. He broke his maiden in November at Aqueduct and then ran second in the GII Remsen S., losing by just a nose. The Risen Star will mark his 3-year-old debut.

“The Derby, it's one of the few races we haven't won and it's definitely right there at the top of the list,” Brown said. “We have a very diverse group of horses to work with. There's a big split between fillies and colts and within those groups are the turf horses. What it boils down to is we don't have many horses in that division. I have plenty of nice horses to work with. I'm not complaining by any means. Any one would love to have the horses I get sent. Once you start paring them down, to see what dirt colts you have that can run two turns and have ability, well, for us, the group isn't huge. If we end up with two or three horses that are on the trail by the first of the year, we are lucky.”

Brown will probably always focus primarily on turf horses, but that obviously didn't bother the Coolmore team. They arrived at the 2022 Saratoga sale eager to spend money. Not only did they buy Sierra Leone, they also paid $1.4 million for Hall of Fame (Gun Runner), who will also start in the Risen Star for trainer Steve Asmussen. If Coolmore continues to support Brown with expensive yearling purchases that will make his chances of winning a Derby all that much easier.

“Will Coolmore keep supporting me, I think that has to be determined,” Brown said. “A lot depends on how these relationships unfold and how successful we are or aren't with this particular horse. I've had horses from them in the past. Not many, but nice horses. Minorette (Smart Strike) was one of the first horses they sent me and we won the Belmont Oaks on the turf with her. I've done a lot of business with Coolmore. I have several stallions standing there: Jack Christopher, Practical Joke, Early Voting. I've always had a great business relationship with them and, occasionally, they have sent a horse or two my way. They like to spread things out and use top trainers all over the country. I'm just happy I'm in that group of trainers.”

After the maiden win, Brown thought Sierra Leone was ready for a challenge. He entered him in the Remsen, knowing the competition would include Dornoch (Good Magic), the full-brother to 2023 Derby winner Mage. For Sierra Leone, it was on oddly run race. On what was a speed-favoring track, he dropped far back early, trailing the field for most of the way before he started to roll on the far turn and set his sights on Dornoch. Inside the sixteenth pole, he put his head in front of Dornoch and it looked like race was over. But Dornoch came again and came back for the win.

“I was a little disappointed,” Brown said. “I thought the second time out he'd show a little more speed. You also have to factor in that sloppy track. He had never been on a track like that and maybe he was caught off guard by that. He was the only horse that day that made up any ground and that's an important thing to note. He really wasn't unlucky. He had every chance to win. He just lost some focus and allowed that other horse, who is a nice horse in his own right, to re-rally on him. I was pleased with the effort though disappointed by the outcome.”

Because Sierra Leone appeared to lose his focus in the Remsen in deep stretch, Brown will equip him with blinkers on Saturday.

With Brown based in Florida over the winter, the most logical spots for Sierra Leone's return may have been the GIII Holy Bull S. or the GII Fountain of Youth S. But Brown feels that the Gulfstream racing surface is a bad fit for Sierra Leone and that's why he has shipped him to Fair Grounds.

“I didn't like the short distance and short stretch of those two races at Gulfstream,” he said. “I had Blazing Sevens (Good Magic) for example. He was a nice horse and nearly won the Preakness, but he ran terrible at Gulfstream. He didn't like the kickback. The kickback at Gulfstream, according to a couple of jockeys I really trust, is that it is a very challenging kickback for a horse to run through. That probably contributes to the appearance that it is a speed-favoring track. Even if they slow the track down, so to speak, it still seems like it's dominated more by front-running horses. I think the kickback has something to do with that. It's just not anything I'm interested in putting this horse through.”

The Risen Star will be the first step in what Brown hopes is a progression that will have his horse at his very best come Derby Day.

“We decided to use just two preps, which is always risky,” Brown said. “I thought, all things considered, like his running style, I feel like his third race of the year will be his best race. And that is a big if because there is a lot of training and racing to still overcome.”

Brown's best two Derby horses have been Good Magic and Zandon (Upstart), who was third in the 2022 Derby. Does Sierra Leone represent his best chance yet?

“I won't say that he's my best threat yet,” Brown said. “Those two horses were really good horses to take into the race. I'd say he belongs in their group, but he's got a ways to go to get to the point where we know he's going to be one of the first two choices in the Derby. I think he can get there. He has the potential to do it. He's training great and he's the right kind of horse. We are really excited about him.”

Brown has a few other horses that could get him to the Derby. Domestic Product (Practical Joke) was second in the Holy Bull. Good Money (Good Magic) broke his maiden at Tampa Bay Downs in his lone start. Tuscan Gold (Medaglia d'Oro) is coming off a maiden win at Gulfstream. But none, at least at this point, compare to Sierra Leone.

“When they give you a horse that cost $2.3 million at the sales, yes, there's a little bit more pressure,” Brown said. “The expectations are certainly high, being that he was a sale-topping yearling at the prestigious Saratoga sale, and rightfully so. The expectations should be high.”

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The Week in Review: Remarkable Streak Connects Ouzts to Pre-Secretariat Era

When Perry Ouzts wired the field aboard an 8-1 maiden filly named Caberneigh (Munnings) at Turfway Park last Wednesday night, the 69-year-old jockey established a milestone that garnered little notice in the racing world. The victory extended Ouzts's remarkable streak of having ridden at least one winner in a calendar year to 52 consecutive seasons.

Think about the scope of that accomplishment for a moment. On Apr. 2, 1973, Ouzts, then 18, rode his first lifetime winner on just his second day as a licensed apprentice, guiding home an Ohio-bred colt named Rablue on a raw, drizzly afternoon at now-defunct Beulah Park.

That first trip to the winner's circle for Ouzts occurred a little more than a month before Secretariat won the GI Kentucky Derby and then raced into immortality by sweeping the Triple Crown.

How many other direct, still-on-the-track competing connections to the pre-Secretariat era endure in our sport today? Not counting owners and trainers, the answer appears to be zero.

Ouzts has racked up 29 meet-leading riding titles at Ohio tracks alone, and just last August he passed David Gall to claim fifth position on the all-time winningest riders list in North America based on victories. The Jan. 16, 2024, win at Turfway upped Ouzts's career count to 7,420, making him the winningest currently active jockey on the continent.

Ahead of Ouzts on the all-time wins list are Russell Baze (12,842), Laffit Pincay, Jr. (9,530), Bill Shoemaker (8,833) and Pat Day (8,803).

Ouzts won't close that daunting 1,383-win gap to advance another spot on the list before his career comes to a close.

But with 53,146 lifetime starts and no publicly announced retirement plans, Ouzts does have a chance at 441 more mounts to get past Baze (53,587) and claim the North American record for most lifetime starts by a jockey, according to the rankings published by Equibase.

Although he's only ridden 10 horses so far this year, Ouzts's business tends to pick up considerably in the spring when Belterra Park returns to action. In the years 2021-23, he rode 592, 485 and 388 horses per season, respectively. Yes, his riding opportunities have been slowly declining, but the lifetime mounts record is still realistically within reach.

Framing Ouzts's years-of-victory streak by saying he's won “at least one” race per year for 52 years does understate his productivity quite a bit. He's ridden more than 100 winners per year close to 40 times (his exact yearly totals predate Equibase's full statistics, which only go back to 1976).

The only true outlier year was 2006, when Ouzts won just six races. That January he cracked four vertebrae, crushed a fifth, and suffered a compound arm fracture in a Turfway spill. Amazingly, prior to that accident, Ouzts had gone 14 years without a major injury.

Doctors told Ouzts, then 51, that he was millimeters away from being paralyzed and suggested he hang up his tack for good.

Ouzts was back riding 11 months later and hasn't stopped since.

Unlike the four jockeys ahead of him on the North American all-time wins list, Ouzts isn't in the Hall of Fame, although his name does occasionally get brought up as a worthy, blue-collar candidate.

This coming Thursday, when the sport celebrates the pinnacle of the profession at the Eclipse Awards in balmy Florida, Ouzts will be back in action under the lights at wintry Turfway, where he expects to add two more mounts to a career measured more in terms of toughness and durability than trophies.

'Phantom' Building Fandom…

Don't dismiss Track Phantom's wire-to-wire, 2 3/4-length score in the GIII Lecomte S. just because jockey Joel Rosario was able to secure the lead and milk the pace. This Steve Asmussen-trained son of Quality Road is now 3-for-3 around two turns, and while his wins might lack the flash and panache of peers ranked ahead of him on the Triple Crown trail, Track Phantom is building credibility by going out and executing his speed-centric tasks without being fazed by how the competition has tried to disrupt his rhythm on the front end.

Sent off at 7-5, Track Phantom broke fluidly from the outermost post in a field of six to clear rail-drawn 11-10 favorite and 'TDN Rising Star' Nash (Medaglia d'Oro). Although it initially appeared as if this maneuver might be requiring a costly expenditure of energy, when a first-quarter clocking of :24.01 lit up on the tote board, the tepid tempo allayed any fears that Rosario was asking too much too soon from his mount, who adeptly settled into a comfortable cadence at the head of the pack.

Track Phantom rolled through subsequent splits of :24.35 and :24.79 with Nash edging closer, but when Rosario sensed that rival was just half a length back three-eighths out, he nudged Track Phantom to open up, and the visual at the quarter pole foretold the story of the stretch run: Track Phantom clearly had more left, while Nash was flailing under desperate urging to find another gear.

Track Phantom cruised through the long Fair Grounds home straight unopposed through a fourth quarter timed in :24.86, with a last sixteenth in :6.72. The final clocking of 1:44.73 translated into a Beyer Speed Figure of 90, improving on his previous four-race Beyer arc of 74, 81, 88 and 89.

Owned in partnership by L and N Racing, Clark Brewster, Jerry Caroom, and Breeze Easy, Track Phantom's “how he did it” progression rates just as highly as his “how fast” metrics. The Lecomte win now marks three straight races in which this colt has been asked to deploy his early speed while figuring out how to best fight off better-positioned rivals to his inside.

'Fame' Was Faster, Though…

Track Phantom wasn't even the fastest sophomore colt out of the Asmussen barn to run 1 1/16 miles at Fair Grounds on Saturday. That 1:44.27 honor went to 10 1/4-length blowout maiden victor Hall of Fame (Gun Runner), who earned a 94 Beyer eight races earlier on the Jan. 20 card for the owner partnership of Magnier, Tabor, Smith, Westerberg, Gandharvi, and Rocket Ship Racing.

Backed to 4-5 favoritism in lifetime start number two, this $1.4-million FTSAUG colt forced markedly faster fractions from the rail than Track Phantom set, with Hall of Fame spending a good portion of his backstretch journey trying to squeeze inside of a persistent 7-2 pacemaker.

Also ridden by Rosario, Hall of Fame finally blasted through on the fence under mild far-turn urging, then ran up the score through the stretch while being kept to task before Rosario wrapped him up through the final 70 yards.

The gaudy winning margin was likely amplified by the fact that no other runners mounted serious late-race bids. But Hall of Fame scored with such commanding authority that it's logical to think a stakes engagement is next.

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Asmussen Eyes Risen Star for Track Phantom, Hall of Fame

A day after Track Phantom (Quality Road)'s win in the GIII Lecomte S. at Fair Grounds Saturday, trainer Steve Asmussen was already looking forward to starting the 3-year-old colt in the Feb. 17 GII Risen Star S. The sophomore, who ended 2023 with a win in the Gun Runner S., will be following the same New Orleans path to the GI Kentucky Derby that Asmussen used for Epicenter (Not This Time) two years ago. Epicenter won the Gun Runner in 2021 and finished second in the Lecomte to begin his sophomore campaign. He went on to win the Risen Star and GII Louisiana Derby before finishing second in the GI Kentucky Derby and GI Preakness S.

“It's easy to compare where he's at with where we were with Epicenter two years ago,” Asmussen said. “Epicenter won the Gun Runner and was second in the Lecomte, but physically he was developing at the right time. I've always felt that in the 3-year-old series at Fair Grounds, your last race isn't good enough for the next one and that's how it should be. I appreciate the timing between races and the progression of the distances. It's ideal. We came up a half-a-length short of our goal of winning the Derby with Epicenter and now Track Phantom is on the same road. I think the Lecomte was as easy on him as you could have wanted it to be, with him still getting something out of it.”

Track Phantom isn't the only winner from Saturday's card in New Orleans that Asmussen is pointing to the Risen Star. Hall of Fame (Gun Runner), a $1.4-million Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling purchase, was tabbed a 'TDN Rising Star' following his 10 1/4-length maiden victory Saturday. The 3-year-old's final time of 1:44.27 for 1 1/16 miles was nearly a half-second faster than Track Phantom's clocking (1:44.73) in the Lecomte.

“Hall of Fame is as advertised,” Asmussen said. “As a $1.4-million yearling, he's impeccably bred and a beautiful individual with a tremendous amount of talent. I do expect him to run back in the Risen Star also. He was ridden much more aggressively [to win] on Saturday because he's playing a little catch up on a horse like Track Phantom, but the ability is there.”

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The Week in Review: ‘Angel’ Aided by Pace Meltdown, but Overall Derby ‘Empire’ Still Hazy

Saturday's running of the GII Risen Star S. at Fair Grounds seems unlikely to produce a colt of the caliber of the race's namesake. In 1988, Risen Star captivated New Orleans as the hometown horse owned by charismatic connections, parlaying a win in the then-GIII Louisiana Derby to Grade I scores in both the Preakness S. and Belmont S. before being voted 3-year-old champion colt at year's end.

But $29.40 upset winner Angel of Empire (Classic Empire) at least fits the bill as a hard-trying underdog you can root for.

On a GI Kentucky Derby trail studded with million-dollar horses, the winner of the Feb. 18 nine-furlong leg of the Fair Grounds sophomore series is a Pennsylvania foal who was bred by Forgotten Land Investment and Black Diamond Equine.

He RNA'd for $32,000 at KEENOV, then hammered for $70,000 at KEESEP for owner Albaugh Family Stables.

Angel of Empire's only two previous victories had come at Horseshoe Indianapolis, although he had most recently finished second, beaten three lengths, in the Oaklawn stakes named after the most prolific Pennsylvania-bred of all time, Smarty Jones.

Congratulations if you managed to sniff out Angel of Empire one week ago, when he closed at 112-1 odds in Pool 4 of the Derby Future Wager.

Trained by Brad Cox and ridden by Luis Saez, Angel of Empire capitalized on an old-fashioned pace meltdown to win by a length in 1:51.47. That equates to the slowest clocking of the Risen Star in five runnings (including a spilt division in 2020) since that stakes was extended to nine furlongs from 1 1/16 miles. The Beyer Speed Figure was 87, two points higher than the colt's runner-up effort in his previous start.

Even before the starter sprang the latch, the projected hot pace on paper loomed as the $400,000 question in the Risen Star.

The speed-centric 'TDN Rising Star' Victory Formation (Tapwrit), the 9-5 favorite, was drawn way out wide in post 13. West Coast invader Harlocap (Justify), the 7-1 third choice, rolled into New Orleans with plenty of “1s” in his running lines. The pesky 25-1 Determinedly (Cairo Prince) was drawn inside of both those rivals. He was supposed to be aiming for shorter races as per his connections, but when no suitable race could be found, trainer Mark Casse decided to give him a shot at 1 1/8 miles, with an aim on letting him rip right to the front and see how far he could lead the field.

Those three scrambled for supremacy just necks apart the first time under the finish wire in the early-evening New Orleans darkness. By the time they hit the backstretch, Determinedly had the lead by 1 1/2 lengths, with Harlocap and Victory Formation both backing off a beat, but still very much fixated on the frontrunner.

At this juncture, Saez was content to keep Angel of Empire parked at the fence. But by the half-mile pole, he sensed the pace would be too taxing for the leaders to maintain, and he began slicing through the pack while maneuvering off the inside.

“The key with him is to follow the right horse,” Saez would say post-win. “We got lucky. When he got to the three-eighths pole, I was pretty loaded. When we got to the top of the straight, I checked if I had the horse. He just kept going, and I just tried to go with him.”

There aren't too many 14-horse fields in the Derby prep series, so it was particularly intriguing to see a line of about eight horses still in it to win it by the upper portion of the long Fair Grounds home straight.

But by the final sixteenth, most of those contenders had faded away like exhausted Mardi Gras revelers, and Angel of Empire chugged by them all with a well-timed late run.

While Angel of Empire's winning final time was slow compared to previous Risen Star runnings, his final furlong of :12.95 was respectable compared to this year's peers. There have been only three nine-furlong Derby qualifying points races so far in 2022-23, and his effort represents the only sub :13 clocking.

State of the Sophomore Division

So we've now reached the 75-day mark to the first Saturday in May. Here's how the state of the 3-year-old division shakes out.

Two clear leaders sit atop the sophomore totem pole. Depending on who's doing the ranking, 'TDN Rising Stars' Arabian Knight (Uncle Mo) and Forte (Violence) are one-two in either order on almost everyone's list.

I've got Arabian Knight slotted on top in the newest installment of the TDN Derby Top 12 that will be published in Wednesday's edition. He's occupied the kingpin spot since the rankings initially got published at the start of January, based at first on his blowout MSW unveiling on the Breeders' Cup undercard, then bolstered by his commanding, control-seizing performance in the slop in the GIII Southwest S.

You can certainly make a strong case for Forte, too, although you'd have to do so without the benefit of having seen him race yet this year. His clout is based on a trio of Grade I wins at age two, including one in the deepest key race of the division in 2022 (the Breeders' Futurity S. at Keeneland) and another in his Breeders' Cup Juvenile smackdown that earned him the Eclipse Award championship.

Right behind the top two, 'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit) has arguably delivered the single most empathic divisional win since January, an eight-length blowout in a one-turn-mile, first-level allowance at Gulfstream Feb. 4. That assertive effort whets the appetite for what this gray might accomplish when his distance-friendly Tapit (out of a Dunkirk mare) pedigree gets tasked with a two-turn assignment.

But beyond that? The ice remains thin on the Derby prospect pond in late February. There are plenty of horses clustered close together who have posted singularly impressive efforts and could be on the verge of further breakout races. But most of them are very light on actual racing experience, making it a dicey proposition to try and embrace any of them with confidence at this juncture.

In general, the balance of power is centered in Florida (particularly for Todd Pletcher's stable) and California (where a court order from last week will likely result in a number of high-level Bob Baffert trainees shifting to other conditioners).

The Derby preps at Fair Grounds, Aqueduct, and Tampa haven't produced any explosive, top-tier contenders yet. Although Oaklawn's Southwest S. yielded Arabian Knight, he's not nominated to this Saturday's GII Rebel S.

Thinking 'Long Range'

Long Range Toddy (Take Charge Indy) earned a footnote in Derby history back in 2019 when, as a 54-1 longshot already beginning to fade on the far turn, he was forced to check sharply as part of chain-reaction crowding that the Churchill Downs stewards deemed to have been caused by first-across-the-wire Maximum Security.

That incident resulted in the first and only disqualification of a Derby winner for an in-race foul when Maximum Security was placed behind Long Range Toddy, who ended up 17th under the wire.

Now, nearly four years later, Long Range Toddy is one of only three remaining horses from that oddball 2019 Derby to still be racing. (Can you name the other two? Answer below.)

But his streak of longevity is striking for what he hasn't done since before the Derby–win a race.

It's also amazing that the 7-year-old has garnered $1,194,670 in lifetime purse earnings without ever being sent postward as the betting favorite in 35 lifetime races.

On Saturday, in the GIII Razorback H. at Oaklawn, Long Range Toddy checked in sixth at 54-1 odds, adding another $9,000 to his bankroll.

For a large chunk of his career Long Range Toddy was campaigned by his breeder, Willis Horton. Owner Zenith Racing acquired him in the spring of 2022.

Ironically, the horse who beat him in the Razorback, Last Samurai (Malibu Moon), is owned by the limited liability company Willis Horton Racing (Horton himself died at 82 last October).

Long Range Toddy last visited the winner's circle in the 2019 Rebel S. at Oaklawn, which was two prep races prior to his brush with infamy in the Kentucky Derby.

The other two alums from the 2019 Derby to still be in training are Tax (Arch), who won a Delaware stakes last summer off a 1 1/2-year layoff (he's now based out of Palm Meadows with one race at Gulfstream this year), and Gray Magician (Graydar), who on Feb. 8 won a $25,000 claimer at Turf Paradise for his first victory since Oct. 10, 2019.

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