Trainer Chad Brown knows how important it is to do well at Saratoga.
The 44-year-old Brown is from nearby Mechanicville and grew up watching the races with his family at Saratoga Race Course. He saw the winning summers of trainers like D. Wayne Lukas and Bill Mott. One day, he hoped, his name would be synonymous with theirs.
He is well on his way.
Brown, the Spa’s two-time defending training champion, owns five titles in the last seven years. And here he is, gunning for another one.
“Like I say every year, this is the most competitive meet in the whole country and there is not a lot of room for error,” Brown said outside his barn on the Oklahoma Training Track. “There are so many things that have to fall into place. You have to have 2-year-olds that show up. We have a lot of turf horses, so we have to dodge the weather; last year we were lucky and we stayed on the turf most of the time.”
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Brown got win No. 1 on the opening day card at Saratoga on July 13 when Salimah , a 4-year-old filly, won the fourth race for owner Stephanie Seymour Brant and jockey Flavien Prat.
Last summer, Brown won the meet with 42 wins, four more than Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher.
With the recent success Brown has enjoyed, it almost becomes expected that he will do well at Saratoga. He knows that, and he embraces the challenge.
“The pressure you feel is the pressure you put on yourself,” Brown said. “It can be your best quality or it can be your worst. I try to manage the pressure to produce and I try to manage it the best way I can. I don’t let it overwhelm me and I also welcome it. If you want to have this quality of horses and this large of an operation, you can’t expect to build it and not have a significant amount of pressure that goes with it.”
Brown has never won the Travers Stakes (G1), a race he deeply wants. He hopes to have a runner in it this year in Blazing Sevens , who finished a game second to National Treasure in the Preakness on May 20.
Brown said Blazing Sevens will run in either the $135,000 Curlin on July 21 or the $500,000 Jim Dandy Stakes (G2) on July 29. Both races are at Saratoga. He said he will have a better idea after Blazing Sevens works on July 15 at the Spa.
