SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Trainer Chad Brown was smiling for more than the obvious reason after watching his Domestic Product rally from the rear of the field to a neck victory over the 8-5 favorite Prince of Monaco in Saturday’s $500,000 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial at Saratoga. Domestic Product won over a track that saw favored horses racing on or near the lead in all the dirt races run earlier on the card.
“I was very pleased, obviously, with the Travers coming up, to be able to see a horse coming from off the pace,” said Brown, who had the stretch-running Sierra Leone and Unmatched Wisdom coming up next in the Travers. The two ultimately finished third and seventh, respectively, in the main event.
Domestic Product was rated among the top 3-year-olds in the division earlier this season before finishing a troubled 13th in the Kentucky Derby. After a second-place effort six weeks later in the 1 1/16-mile Pegasus at Monmouth Park, Brown opted to shorten him up to a mile for the Grade 3 Dwyer.
Domestic Product responded with an eye-catching 7 1/2-length victory in a career-best performance that served as a perfect prep for yet another turnback in distance, to seven furlongs, for the Grade 1 Allen Jerkens. His sire, Practical Joke, won here in similar late-running fashion for Brown seven years ago.
Things didn’t start out well for Domestic Product, who broke last in a field of 11 very talented 3-year-olds. With Flavien Prat aboard, Domestic Product began to work his way forward near the inside leaving the backstretch and around the turn, angling out to the middle of the track before ultimately wearing down Prince of Monaco in the final hundred yards.
Prince of Monaco, a slow-starting second here 11 weeks earlier in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens, raced closer to the pace this time around, readily overtook the tiring pacesetter World Record approaching the furlong grounds, dug in gamely when engaged by the winner but was not good enough.
Book’em Danno, who defeated Prince of Monaco in the Woody Stephens, rallied belatedly near the inside to finish another length farther back in third.
Domestic Product is trained by Brown for Klaravich Stables Inc., who also was a major partner in his sire, Practical Joke. He completed the distance in 1:21.71 seconds and paid $11.00 while giving Prat the third of his four winners on the Travers Day program.
Domestic Product earned a 106 Beyer Speed Figure.
“This horse has always been a high-quality horse. I thought enough of him to run him in the Kentucky Derby,” Brown said. “After the Derby, I started to work backwards from this race and I told Seth (Klarman, owner of Klaravich Stables) that we were going to try to do the same thing we did with his sire, who also ran in the Derby, and cut back to win the Jerkens on Travers Day. The more I started looking at him exiting the Derby, the more I changed my lens looking toward his sire and what worked for him.”
Brown admitted he had some anxious moments after Domestic Product broke slow and found himself at the rear of the field over what had appeared to be a speed-favoring strip up to that point.
“I wasn’t feeling too well when he broke slow,” Brown said. “As he started moving forward inside horses, it looked like he was doing it in a way that he wasn’t using up too much energy to improve position. I was optimistic, at least, turning for home, as he was gobbling up ground late. I thought he’d have a chance near the wire. He nosed out a very, very good horse.”
Brown said he would take a step back with Domestic Product before deciding when, and even if, he will run him again this season.
“These horses that were on the Derby trail are still breezing and running. They’ve done a lot of work, and this is a young horse,” Brown noted. “So I don’t feel any pressure to run him at all. But I’ll talk to Seth to see what we want to do together.”
John Velazquez, who rode Prince of Monaco, said he had a perfect trip.
“He actually had a really good break today,” Velazquez said. “We were where we wanted to be in the first part of the race. I asked him to run, he ran. The other one was just a little faster than mine.”
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