At Saratoga Race Course, the term "sure thing" is akin to a four-letter word.
But if you are looking for the closest thing to it, then file this nugget away until next year, when the Belmont Stakes (G1) will most likely return to the Spa for a third and final time, and bet on trainer Chad Brown to win the Just a Game Stakes (G1T).
You might have to cover a few horses, but in the end the victorious trainer will be Brown, just as it was June 6 when the five-time Eclipse Award winner captured the Just a Game for the eighth time in nine years as Klaravich Stables' Dynamic Pricing posted a three-quarter-length victory over stablemate Excellent Truth in the $500,000 mile turf stakes for fillies and mares.
"I like winning this race," Brown said after his 1-2 finish. "I point to it every year. It's a nice run we're on with this race. We're making a lot of history. As long as I'm training, I'll point to it."
Brown also credited his staff for the teamwork that has kept the stable at the top of New York and national leaderboards for nearly 10 years.
"Probably half of the people who work for me have been with me for 10 years. The first and second finishers are real nice horses and we are lucky enough to have them and I have the right people working with them," Brown said.
Dynamic Pricing, a 4-year-old daughter of Night of Thunder, was Brown's eighth different Just a Game winner as she notched her initial grade 1 win and third graded stakes win overall. A grade 2 winner a year ago, she came into the race off a win in the Beaugay Stakes (G3T) to start 2025 and took a nice step forward to hold off Excellent Truth.
Heavy rain during the card left the course yielding, which worked to Dynamic Pricing's benefit.
"When the skies opened and it rained, she moves up on soft and yielding turf," Brown said after his fourth straight Just a Game win. "The weather comes and you have to hope you have the right horse, that it doesn't hold them back. For her, she's looking for soft turf."
Ridden by Dylan Davis, Dynamic Pricing saved ground on the backstretch and then swung out five wide turning for home with Excellent Truth, the 8-5 favorite, just outside of her. They moved past early leader Kehoe Beach at the sixteenth pole and battled to the wire together.
Final time was 1:38.77 as Dynamic Pricing paid $22 and gave Brown his fourth winner of the day and second graded stakes victory.
Bred in Ireland by Epona Bloodstock out of the Dutch Art mare Shemda, Dynamic Pricing won for the fourth time in nine career starts.
Excellent Truth, a daughter of Cotai Glory owned by Resolute Racing (which sponsored the race), was second by a length over Team Valor International and Steven Rocco's Special Wan, a Belardo mare trained by Brendan Walsh.
Brown said he would look at the Diana Stakes (G1T) July 12 at the Spa for Dynamic Pricing, a race he has won in eight of the last nine years.
Sound familiar?
