The unthinkable happened April 10, 2021, at Keeneland. A horse not trained by Chad Brown won the Jenny Wiley Stakes.
Brown has won this 1 1/16-mile turf fixture for fillies and mares seven times and six out of the last seven years, and on Saturday he sends out likely favorite Excellent Truth in the Grade 1, $650,000 Jenny Wiley.
Excellent Truth would be Brown’s first Jenny Wiley winner making her first North American start. Sistercharlie had one American run after being imported from France before winning in 2018.
Excellent Truth also comes from France, where she last raced in July, her second-place finish behind multiple Group 1-winner Mqse de Sevigne in the Group 1 Prix Rothschild a key plank in her Jenny Wiley favoritism. That career-best performance also helped draw a winning bid of nearly $1.7 million from John Stewart’s Resolute Racing at the Arqana December breeding stock sale.
The Jenny Wiley doesn’t usually attract overseas shippers, but Jabaara comes from trainer Roger Varian in England, Choisya from Dubai for co-trainers Simon and Ed Crisford. Both merit consideration as do several in the American contingent.
Be Your Best and Sacred Wish finished one-two Jan. 25 in the Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf. Be Your Best was a neck better that day but perhaps not the better chance Saturday. While Be Your Best ran the race of her life in the Pegasus, Sacred Wish exited a win in the Grade 1 Matriarch over top American turf mares Gina Romantica and Ag Bullet. Earlier in the season, Sacred Wish lost by a neck to Beaute Cachee, Brown’s most recent Jenny Wiley winner. Trainer George Weaver has targeted this race for a couple months with 5-year-old Sacred Wish.
“She’s filled out as she’s matured. The older she’s gotten, the better she’s gotten,” Weaver said.
Poolside With Slim makes her 4-year-old debut, and while talented appears a cut below the leading contenders. That might also seem the case with 5-year-old No Show Sammy Jo, but a deeper dive reveals a stealth contender.
Campaigned sparingly, No Show Sammy Jo has won four of six, and in her most recent start five months ago in the Long Island at Aqueduct, she fell much too far behind a slow pace before a furious rally, capped by a 10.98 final furlong, got her within a nose of wire-to-wire winner Be Your Best. No Show Sammy Jo has trained with verve in Florida this winter.
“She’s kind of done everything I wanted. I’ve been pretty happy with her in the morning,” trainer Graham Motion said. “It’s a big ask, but we’ve been pretty conservative up to now. We’ve kind of had this year in mind for her.”
Motion might be pretty happy with his mare’s training. Wesley Ward raves about Kehoe Beach. Switched from dirt to turf last summer, Kehoe Beach set a course record winning a Kentucky Downs first-level allowance by more than eight lengths, then crushed second-level allowance foes at Keeneland and capped her season with a 1 1/4-length win in the Mrs. Revere, an age-restricted Grade 2 race at Churchill Downs. Kehoe Beach set the pace in all three starts under Frankie Dettori and will do so again Saturday.
“Granted we’re in against Chad Brown, but she’s breezing like one of the best horses I ever had. Whether that translates to a Grade 1 win off the bench we’ll see, but I couldn’t lead one over with more confidence,” Ward said.
Jabaara managed a distant second behind Porta Fortuna in the Group 1 Falmouth Stakes last summer, coming out atop a four-horse blanket finish. A merited disqualification cost her a win in the Group 3 Oak Tree last summer at Goodwood. Raqiya, who was placed first, won the Grade 3 Goldikova in her North American debut, then was fifth in the Pegasus.
Varian gave Jabaara a March 8 all-weather prep for this start, the filly’s fourth-place finish resulting in part from a bad inside trip.
Choisya’s form from England doesn’t fit a race like this, but in Dubai this winter she elevated her game. While the easiest of leads propelled her to victory in the Cape Verdi Stakes, Choisya definitely earned her Feb. 21 win in the Balanchine, where she fought off a powerful kick from Cinderella’s Dream, second last fall in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf, and won by a head. Choisya finished like a blur in both starts, getting her last 400 meters in 22.50 and her final 200 in 10.67 to win the Balanchine.
As for Excellent Truth, she topped out her first nine starts as a Group 3 type, a roly-poly hold-up horse who would come with a long, fairly effective run. Last summer, looking like a more chiseled athlete, Excellent Truth cut back in distance to one mile and changed her running style, racing on or near the lead.
Sitting second along the inside rail in the straight-course Rothschild, Excellent Truth finished strongly to beat everyone save Mqse de Sevigne, and she appears to have worked well over dirt at Payson Park this winter.
It might take some work for anyone to keep Brown from another Jenny Wiley win.
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