Co-owner: After Sunday, Sierra Leone trains up to Breeders’ Cup
No matter how he does Sunday in the Grade 1, $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup at Saratoga, Eclipse Award winner Sierra Leone will train up to his defense in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Brook T. Smith, who owns a one-sixth share of the deep-closing, 4-year-old colt, confirmed Thursday what trainer Chad Brown had strategized for this month’s winner of the Whitney Stakes (G1).
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“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Smith said on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “Chad wanted to get another race into him after the Whitney (G1) just to try to get him a little bit closer to the Classic. Again, assuming everything goes well and he runs big and comes out of the race well, he’ll just train up to the Classic. That’s when the real party starts.”
The trend is growing for Breeders’ Cup Classic horses to skip any preps after Labor Day weekend. Seven of the 14 starters last year including victorious Sierra Leone trained at least two months up to the $7 million race. Five of the 12 did it in 2023, including the winner White Abarrio.
Sierra Leone, who is owned by Peter Brant, Coolmore, Westerberg and Smith, won the Whitney on Aug. 2 at Saratoga. It was his first victory of 2025 after finishing third in the New Orleans Classic (G2) at Fair Grounds and second in the Stephen Foster (G1) at Churchill Downs. All three races were 1 1/8 miles. The Jockey Club Gold Cup is 1 1/4 miles as is the Breeders’ Cup Classic, the Nov. 1 race at Del Mar that will be Sierra Leone’s last before he goes to stud for Coolmore.
“I think the race at Churchill where Mindframe won and won well was more of like a set-up (for Sierra Leone) for the next couple races,” said Smith, a Kentucky-based entrepreneur and benefactor for racing charities. “He’d had a bit of a layoff. It was a mile-and-an-eighth. He was just getting back and racing, and he did his kind of usual flying at the end.”
Mindframe is 2-for-2 against Sierra Leone, including their two-three finish behind Dornoch in the 2024 Belmont Stakes over the same course and distance as the Jockey Club Gold Cup. Even so, Sierra Leone was made the 8-5 morning-line favorite and Mindframe 2-1 for Sunday’s rematch.
“(Sierra Leone) gets an extra eighth of a mile,” Smith said. “Mindframe is as classy a horse as there is, but with the extra eighth of a mile and how well he’s doing, you know he’s got two races left. I don’t want to jinx him, but I think he’s going to show really, really well on Sunday.”
Brown also entered Contrary Thinking as a rabbit in the Jockey Club Gold Cup as he did in the Whitney. He is there to guarantee that Sierra Leone will have an honest pace into which he may rally.
“It does ensure some pace,” Smith said. “Like in the Whitney, did that really affect the outcome of the race? Hard to say. I think the pace is one thing, but with the extra eighth of a mile, it’s just how the race goes as long as there’s no trouble. There’s some speed and some racy horses in there. (Defending winner) Highland Falls is no joke. I wouldn’t be surprised, (and) it wouldn’t shock me to death to see him run a huge race. The rabbit is a factor, but in Sierra Leone’s case, I don’t know that it’s like the deciding factor.”
Sierra Leone won the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year and clinched the 3-year-old male championship without a designated rabbit. He will be challenged to do the same thing this fall against a field that should include 3-year-old standouts Sovereignty and Journalism. Throw in older horses such as Saturday’s Pacific Classic (G1) favorite Nysos, Eclipse Award winner Fierceness and 2023 Breeders’ Cup Classic winner White Abarrio, and Smith thinks racing should celebrate a bumper crop of talent right now.
“We’ve got some good cadence going here,” he said. “Now you have one monster colt (Sovereignty) that seems to be almost unbeatable at this point, and then you have Journalism that’s no joke. It’s going to be really interesting to see how it all comes together. But one race at a time, right?”