After four Eclipse Awards, 350 graded stakes victories, and 15 Breeders' Cup wins, Chad Brown would not seem a trainer to become awestruck by a single breeze from a horse, rather the opposite. His achievements have led owners to send a steady stream of talented horses into his stable, setting a high bar of excellence.
But even he felt a burst of excitement when working a relatively unheralded 2-year-old this summer, so much so that he hopped on his phone, calling Paul Sharp, who had provided the colt's early training in Florida and Liz Crow, the bloodstock agent who had acquired the horse.
"He doesn't call me very often outside of sales. So I was kind of worried when I answered the phone," said Crow, fearing an injury or other bad news related to one of her clients' horses.
It wasn't.
"'That Jack Christopher,''' she recalls Brown saying, "and I was waiting for some punch line—I don't know what I was waiting for—but he's like, 'Holy (cow)'—I know you can't use that in your article—but he's like, 'Holy (cow), this horse is really nice.'"
Since then, Jack Christopher has not only met expectations but surpassed them. He is an unbeaten grade 1 winner, having triumphed in the Champagne Stakes (G1) at Belmont Park after a debut maiden score at Saratoga Race Course. The colt is the morning-line favorite in the TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile Presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (G1) Nov. 5 at Del Mar. Win the 1 1/16-mile race, and he's champion 2-year-old male—though that is likely also true of most of the race's leading prospects.
It's a road Brown has been down before in California. Four years ago when Del Mar last hosted the Breeders' Cup, Brown brought another twice-raced juvenile to the seaside track with similar preparation, e Five Racing Thoroughbreds and Stonestreet Stables' Good Magic . Also exiting the Champagne, Good Magic made his two-turn debut in the Juvenile and delivered, rolling to a 4 1/4-length victory. Though still a maiden coming into the Juvenile, his triumph was enough to catapult him to a 2-year-old championship. He was then one of the top 3-year-olds of 2018.
Now Brown aims to repeat the winning Juvenile pattern, currently with a more accomplished 2-year-old, a colt his trainer believes is the "leader of the division."
"They do have a lot of similarities with their ability and the two races they ran in—a maiden and the Champagne," Brown said in a telephone interview before sending his Breeders' Cup runners west. "Traveling to Del Mar is very similar, spacing is very similar. I feel good bringing him out there."
If Jack Christopher is the divisional leader, however, it isn't by much. Bob Baffert trainees Corniche and Pinehurst have similar résumés, unbeaten in a pair of starts and sporting separate grade 1 victories on the West Coast.
However, Corniche has done something Jack Christopher has not, that being win around two turns at 1 1/16 miles. Jack Christopher stretches out to the distance for the first time after competing in one-turn contests.
Though 2019 Champagne victor Tiz the Law and 2011 Champagne winner Union Rags won over classic distances, the former winning the 1 1/4-mile Runhappy Travers Stakes (G1) and the latter the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes (G1), many Champagne winners over the past decade proved to be high-class short- or middle-distance types. Jackie's Warrior and Firenze Fire, the race's respective winners in 2020 and 2017, for example, run in the Nov. 6 Qatar Racing Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) over six furlongs at Del Mar.
Brown's prior Champagne winners, Complexity (2018) and Practical Joke (2016), were also most effective at a mile or less.
Shanghai Bobby is the last horse to win both the Champagne and Breeders' Cup Juvenile, doing so during his unbeaten 2-year-old campaign in 2012. Uncle Mo won the same races during a perfect campaign in 2010.
Jack Christopher is by Munnings out of the winless Half Ours mare Rushin No Blushin, a half sister to grade 1-winning sprinter Street Boss.
Brown believes Jack Christopher can handle the distance of the Juvenile, as does Crow, who added another sales feather in her cap with Jack Christopher's on-track achievements. Crow and her team previously bought Breeders' Cup winners Monomoy Girl, British Idiom, and Aunt Pearl at auction.
"Listen, it's gonna be a tough test," she said. "It's a good group this year, but I feel the one-turn distance of the Champagne is a really tough distance for horses to conquer, a really long way to endure your speed. So I would say that is a good steppingstone for him. I don't know—around the turn, and with a sixteenth left, I'll be holding my breath."
She won't be alone in urging him onward.
The colt, who debuted for owners Jim Bakke and Gerald Isbister, now has other partners on board. Partners associated with Coolmore Stud and Peter Brant joined in the ownership after an Aug. 28 maiden win at Saratoga, a race Jack Christopher won by 8 3/4 lengths with six furlongs in 1:09.85.
The partnership was negotiated by Crow's business partner, Bradley Weisbord, Bakke said. Weisbord and Bakke have been friends since Weisbord was a student at the University of Wisconsin, located in Madison, Wis., a city that is also the headquarters of the Sub-Zero Freezer Company Bakke heads.
Named by Bakke after his nine-month-old grandson Jack Christopher, the 2-year-old provided the owner with his first grade 1 victory.
"I've been a horse owner for over 25 years," he said. "I've never had any horse come close to this in terms of ability, that's for sure. He's probably a horse of a lifetime for an owner like myself."
The colt became Bakke's a year ago, purchased by Weisbord and Crow at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearlings Sale from the Paramount Sales consignment. Castleton Lyons & Kilboy Estate bred him.
"(Jim) said he was looking for fillies, but since I really liked him, to go ahead and bid," Crow said. "He gave me a $125,000 budget, and I spent $135,000. I called him afterward and asked him for forgiveness instead of asking for approval before. He kinda laughed and said, 'No problem.'"
For Bakke—who spreads his horses out among a group of trainers, including Dale Romans, Todd Pletcher, and Brad Cox—Jack Christopher has given him lasting memories and a high opinion of Brown.
"This is my second horse with Chad," Bakke said. "Obviously he's a great horse trainer, does a great job."
Though he only began training in late 2007, Brown trails only Hall of Famers D. Wayne Lukas (20) and Bob Baffert (17) in Breeders' Cup victories. Brown is the winningest trainer of turf winners in Breeders' Cup history, even outpacing powerhouse international grass stables such as that of Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien.
"I did not know that about the turf stat. It's very gratifying," Brown said. "I reflect and say, wow, I'm thankful for the horses I've had and my great team."
But Breeders' Cup time comes with a mix of emotions, filled with excitement and pride in his horses but also mixed with the disappointment of knowing some of his trainees will soon exit his barn. Some older horses he trains will head to stud or be sold at public auction in sales following the Breeders' Cup. In advance of the Breeders' Cup, he mentioned coming to terms with horses like Raging Bull and Dunbar Road moving on after racing on Saturday.
"Every year, it's so hard. It's so hard to say goodbye," he said.
Going into 2022, he can take comfort in some horses sticking around—not only Jack Christopher with major 3-year-old races next year on the horizon but with grade 1-winning turf geldings like Domestic Spending and Tribhuvan flourishing in the middle portions of their careers and poised for continued racing. The latter two, part of his three-horse lineup in the Longines Breeders' Cup Turf (G1T) are among Brown's 13 Breeders' Cup entries.
