Sistercharlie leads Brown trifecta in Beverly D. Stakes at Arlington

Sistercharlie continued a dominant season in Saturday’s Grade 1, $600,000 Beverly D. Stakes, leading home a Chad Brown-trained trio in Arlington Park’s premier race for fillies and mares on the turf.

The Beverly D. marked the third Grade 1 win for Sistercharlie this season, and gave Brown his fifth victory in the race, including his fourth consecutive score. Brown had the top three finishers in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley this spring, which was also led by Sistercharlie.

When asked if Sistercharlie ever runs a bad race, Brown answered:

“No. She’s very consistent. She’s the type of mare any trainer would love to have.”

Brown fillies took the early lead, with Thais beating stablemate Inflexibility out of the gate. Athena, the recent Grade 1 Belmont Oaks Invitational winner, was not too far from the pace as Brown’s other contenders, Sistercharlie and Fourstar Crook, waited to make their moves behind Grade 1 winner Daddys Lil Darling.

Sistercharlie and Fourstar Crook are not unfamiliar rivals. The Beverly D. winner also bested Fourstar Crook in the Jenny Wiley before the story was reversed in the Grade 2 New York Stakes. Fourstar Crook then sat the next race out as Sistercharlie rallied to a nose victory in the Grade 1 Diana Stakes.

The Beverly D. was a star-studded field, and Sistercharlie did not have much pace to close against. Thais opened up with easy fractions of 24:53, 50.53 and 1:15.29. Sistercharlie made a wide move under John Velazquez, as did Fourstar Crook and Irad Ortiz Jr., passing Athena who had no response. The two quickly closed in on the frontrunners as Daddys Lil Darling made a move up the inside, but the Brown fillies on the outside were in the clear.

Fourstar Crook gave chase down the stretch but could not catch Sistercharlie, who finished the 1 3/16 miles in 1:56.77.

“It was a perfect trip,” Velazquez said. “We broke a little slow like always. As soon as we went past the wire I looked for the position I wanted and I got it. Then I sat there and I saw Ryan Moore [on Athena] move on the outside into the backstretch and kind of pushed him out and he came in, and I kind of followed him from there. From the half-mile pole there was just one horse to beat so I put her right behind that one and when I asked her she responded really well.

“She’s a really good horse but she has some quirks. She can run, though.”

As for the runner-up, Ortiz Jr. said:

“She’s a nice mare, she tries hard. She got beat by Sistercharlie, one of the greatest turf fillies right now.”

Thais held for third over Daddys Lil Darling to round out the Brown trifecta, with Inflexibility, Nyaleti, Athena, Oh So Terrible and Dona Bruja completing the order of finish.

“Fourstar Crook is a rock-solid consistent horse as well,” Brown added. “So fortunate to have both of them in the same stable and when they run against each other neither of them deserves to lose. That’s the bad part. But, both of them deserve to be in the race and that’s why we run them.”