Brown has two running
Mechanicville trainer enters Crowded Trade, Risk Taking in 2nd leg
Flash back to the Preakness of 2017. Mechanicville’s favorite horse trainer, Chad Brown, came into Charm City pretty much unnoticed and then left with all the parting gifts.
His horse, Cloud Computing, owned by Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables and Albany’s Bill Lawrence, surprised everyone when he won the Preakness at odds of 13-1.
Fast forward to now and here comes Brown again. This time, for Preakness No. 146, he has a pair of horses set to run in the second leg of the Triple Crown. And, again, he might be overlooked by the masses.
Before you decide to chuck his horses, take a closer look. Brown was befuddled when the colt Risk Taking threw in a clunker in the Grade II Wood Memorial on April 3, running a horrid seventh as the 5-2 favorite. Brown expects a much better effort in the 1 3⁄16-mile Preakness.
Maybe take an even longer glimpse at the other Brown horse, Crowded Trade. That horse has taken the exact path to the Preakness as Cloud Computing, and their results are eerily similar.
Both horses did not race at the age of 2.
Cloud Computing came into the Preakness with three starts. Crowded Trade has had three starts.
Cloud Computing broke his maiden in his first start at Aqueduct. So did Crowded Trade.
Cloud Computing finished second in the Grade III Gotham at the Big A. Ditto Crowded
Trade.
Cloud Computing was third in the Grade II Wood Memorial. That’s where Crowded Trade finished, too.
Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano rode Cloud Computing for the first time when he won the Preakness. Yup, Castellano will be on Crowded Trade for the first time on Saturday.
“Yes, they look very similar,” Brown said this week. “We are hoping for the same result.”
If there is one thing that concerns Brown about Crowded Trade, it’s whether or not he can get the Preakness distance. He is a son of More Than Ready, who was an accomplished one-turn horse. Cloud Computing is by Maclean’s Music, who only had one career start.
In the Wood Memorial, Crowded Trade hung a little bit in the Aqueduct stretch and finished third behind two hard-to-figure horses in Bourbonic (72-1) and Dynamic One (15-1).
“He made up a lot of ground after breaking bad,” Brown said. “That might have taken a little starch out of him in the lane. He ran really well. Crowded Trade is still a question mark (about the distance). When he came up short in the stretch, I have to hope it was due to inexperience and the final bit of seasoning and fitness that he needed.”
Risk Taking, a son of Medaglia d’oro, should have no problems getting the distance. His sire won such prestigious races as the Travers (2002) and Whitney (2003) at Saratoga, and Risk Taking won the Grade III Withers at Aqueduct by 3 3⁄4 lengths on Feb. 6.
Then came the dud in the Wood Memorial.
Brown said Risk Taking did take a lot of kickback in the Wood and when he came back to be unsaddled, his blinkers were caked in mud. The following day, he said the colt had one eye closed.
“Clearly, the kickback impacted him to some degree,” Brown said. “Whether that fully explains why he just quit in that race, I will never be certain of it. I am just going to draw a line through that race. I just hope he can get back to his race in the Withers, which would put him in contention here.”
Risk Taking is 15-1 on the Preakness morning line and Crowded Trade is 10-1.
They might not get a lot of looks with the likes of Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit in here, as well as fleet-footed stablemate Concert Tour.
That’s OK with Brown, a four-time winner of the Eclipse Award as the nation’s leading trainer. He has a feeling he is bringing horses into Pimlico with more than just a slight chance to do some good.
“They are fresh and they are coming off a couple of their best workouts of the season,” Brown said.
The two horses worked together at Belmont Park last Sunday, getting five furlongs in 1:01.76.
“It’s a good opportunity to take a shot in a classic race,” he said. “Going into a race like this, you want to have a horse really thriving and doing well. I think we have two of them. I think the reward outweighs the risk to take