Of all the turf stakes trainer Chad Brown has won, he has dominated the Diana Stakes (G1T) like no other.
When Juddmonte’s Whitebeam went back to back in the $500,000 Diana, the three-quarters-of-a-length score in the July 13 stakes at Saratoga Race Course accounted for Brown’s ninth victory in the mile-and-an-eighth turf test for fillies and mares and eighth in the last nine years.
Completing the circle of success. Brown’s very first grade 1 win came when Zagora prevailed in the 2011 edition of the Diana.
“It’s remarkable the horses and the clients I’ve had through the years. It’s nine Dianas and there are several team members that were there for the first Diana and they’ve been here with all of them. That’s the consistency of the program, really. (Bobby) Frankel taught me well and he was always pointing towards this race,” said Brown, a former assistant to the late Hall of Famer Frankel.
His latest Diana win added yet another glowing line to Brown’s résumé that seems certain to earn him a spot in the Hall of Fame once the four-time Eclipse Award winner completes his 25th year as trainer in 2032. A winner of 2,658 races in his career, his horses have earned $289,300,559, placing him sixth on the all-time earnings list.
“It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team,” Brown said. “There’s a very short list of races when I left Frankel that it was just instilled in me that he held in high regard and pointed towards. The Diana was way up on that list. For him to hold it in high regard, it really must have meant something. So, I thought if I ever had good enough horses, this is a race I really need to focus on because he’s not wrong much. I’m very fortunate to have horses good enough to run in this race, really.”
Whitebeam was winless in four starts since taking the 2023 Diana but was coming off a strong second in the June 7 Just a Game Stakes (G1T), when she finished a half-length behind Brown stablemate and Diana starter Chili Flag . The Diana was her third start of the year and the third time was surely the charm.
Whitebeam and jockey Flavien Prat grabbed the lead from the start, covering the opening half-mile in :49.49 while leading by a length. If the early fractions were modest, Whitebeam surely began motoring after six furlongs in 1:13.76. As 2-1 favorite Didia tried to collar her, the daughter of Caravaggio covered her next quarter-mile in a blazing :22.94 to fend off that bid and open a safe 1 1/2-length lead in midstretch.
While Didia dropped back to fourth, Peter Brant’s Gina Romantica and then Lanni Bloodstock, Madaket Stables, and SF Racing’s Moira cut into the lead but could not reel in the 5-year-old Whitebeam ($11.60), who covered the nine furlongs in 1:48.14 while becoming the eighth back-to-back Diana winner and topping her time of 1:48.33 from a year ago.
“There was a lack of pace on paper and plan was to go out there and just try to control the race and see if she was good enough to hold on,” Brown said.
Moira, the Kevin Attard-trained Canadian-bred 2022 Queen’s Plate Stakes winner, closed strongly from sixth in the field of 10. The Ghostzapper mare grabbed second by a nose over Gina Romantica, an Into Mischief mare who was one of Brown’s five starters in the race. He also sent out Coppice , who was fifth, Fluffy Socks (eighth), and Chili Flag (ninth).
The win was the sixth in 14 starts for Whitebeam, who started her career in Europe.
A daughter of the Oasis Dream mare Sleep Walk, she is the third of her seven foals as well as the lone graded stakes winner and second winner. Sleep Walk also has an unraced 2-year-old Frankel colt named Night Walker and a yearling No Nay Never colt.
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