Chad Brown (NYRA/Coglianese)
Tom Luicci/Monmouth Park
OCEANPORT, N.J.— As impressive a meet as trainer Chad Brown has had at Monmouth Park this year, with five stakes wins (three graded) and 19 winners overall from 60 starts, the final two weekends offer the promise of more to come.
That starts with Saturday’s $100,000 Violet Stakes that kicks off three days of live racing over the Labor Day weekend. Brown will send out Veronica Greene and Beaute Cachee in the mile and a sixteenth grass feature for fillies and mares, 3 and up.
The Violet Stakes has drawn a field of eight.
“We’re happy. It’s been a good meet with a very good percentage,” said Luis Cabrera, who oversees Brown’s division at Monmouth Park. “We still have quite a few more horses we want to run here before the meet ends (Sept. 10). We have some maidens, some allowance horses and some stakes horses ready to go here.”
Of the five stakes races Brown has won at Monmouth Park this summer, three have been Grade 3s.
Veronica Greene enters the Violet Stakes off a disappointing sixth-place finish in optional allowance company at Saratoga, having tried blinkers for the first time in that race. The 4-year-old daughter of Tapit, owned by Peter M. Brant, was fourth in the Grade 3 Beaugay Stakes on May 7 at Belmont Park in her second race of the year.
“I don’t think she wanted to race with blinkers,” said Cabrera, so we took them off again,” said Cabrera. “She seems better without them. She is training well without the blinkers. I like her in this spot. She has been at Monmouth Park for about four weeks and she has been training well for this.”
Veronica Greene shows a 2-3-1 line from nine career starts. She has two wins, two seconds and a third from her seven lifetime grass starts.
Beaute Cachee, meanwhile, will be making her third start in the United States after racing in France in 2021 and 2022. She won her debut in this country at Belmont Park on May 26 against allowance company and then was second, beaten just a neck, on July 27 at Saratoga.
All 14 of her career starts have been on the grass. The 4-year-old daughter of Literato is owned by Madaket Stables LLC, Michael Dubb and Louis Lazzinnaro.
“She will ship in (from Saratoga) the day of the race so I haven’t been around her recently,” said Cabrera. “But I know her from being at Payson Park (Florida) over the winter. I was there when she was there and I saw her breeze. I think she can be a good one.”
Brown’s success at Monmouth Park this summer includes 12 winners (from 22 starters) for Klaravich Stables, currently the leading owner at the meet.
