SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Chad Brown is hoping Thursday’s $150,000 Wild Applause Stakes at Saratoga will be a stepping-stone to bigger and better things for a trio of his lightly raced but promising 3-year-old fillies. Brown’s Lavender Disaster, Play With Fire, and Midway Memories all figure prominently in the one-mile turf stakes.
The Wild Applause lured a field of seven and, along with the Brown threesome, includes Classic Q; the Cherie DeVaux-trained pair of Love and Poetry and Especially; and the graded stakes-tested Fixin to Bee. Ruth is the lone main-track-only entrant.
The long-term forecast is calling for a 45 percent chance of rain on Thursday.
Brown’s contenders are coming off victories in their most recent starts, although the five-time Eclipse Award winner conceded this race will be a step up in class for all three of them.
Play With Fire figures to be the most fancied of the group exiting a well-graded, come-from-behind, one-length victory in the Hilltop Stakes going a mile over a good course nearly six weeks earlier at Pimlico. A daughter of Oscar Performance, Play With Fire was purchased privately by her current owner, LSU Stables, and transferred to Brown shortly after the race.
“She’s training along well since joining our barn,” said Brown, who will be seeking a record sixth win in the Wild Applause. “I flirted with the idea of running her in the [Belmont] Oaks but decided to keep her at a mile for one more start. If she does well here, I’d think about stretching her out further after that.”
Lavender Disaster also should get plenty of mutuel support after beating older horses in her 2025 debut going one mile on May 25 at Aqueduct while registering a career-best 78 Beyer Speed Figure in the process. The victory was the second in three starts for the Into Mischief filly, whose lone setback came as a result of an extremely eventful trip when she was eased to the wire last fall at Aqueduct in the Grade 2 Miss Grillo.
“She’s a horse we’ve really thought a lot of right from the start and she’s nearly perfect,” Brown said. “That one race my other horse [Marvelous Madison] took her out [approaching the stretch]. It’s just a throw out. She won nice off the layoff last time, plus I think she needed the race. But she took that race well and has really moved forward in her training.”
Midway Memories won her maiden in popular fashion in just her second career start on April 23 at Aqueduct, but a series of events beyond Brown’s control have kept her idle ever since.
“She was in at Penn [National] but with all the rescheduling [because of weather and track conditions] I didn’t want to keep doing that,” Brown explained. “Then she was in at Monmouth and the quarantine got her. This definitely wasn’t plan A, where she is.”
Brown acknowledged to being a bit concerned about the lack of any real pace in the Wild Applause although he believes Lavender Disaster can be forwardly placed.
“Now that she’s racing more, she’s been a little sharper,” Brown said. “I don’t think she’ll be too far away.”
On paper, Classic Q projects as the pacesetter, although her trainer, Mark Casse, would rather see her back off the leaders in light of her most recent outing when she finished a tiring seventh as the 3-2 favorite trying 1 1/8 miles in the Grade 3 Regret.
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“I think she’s a better horse when you cover her up. Unfortunately, she broke like a rocket and just ran off in her last start,” Casse recalled. “She probably should be undefeated at a mile, the race Vixen won [the Grace 3 Herecomesthebride at Gulfstream Park], she had a horrible trip. She was tons the best.”
Love and Poetry and stablemate Especially come off third-place finishes against high-priced optional-claiming and allowance competition at Churchill. Especially will be making her turf debut in the Wild Applause.
Fixen To Bee finished fifth, three lengths in front of the tiring Classic Q, despite an eventful trip in the Regret.
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