Brown points Gotham winner Iron Honor to 151st Preakness Stakes

Beaten Wood Favorite Follows Path of Trainer’s Two Preakness Winners

LOUISVILLE – Trainer Chad Brown said Gotham Stakes (G3) winner Iron Honor is being pointed for the 151st Preakness Stakes (G1) Saturday, May 16 at Laurel Park..

“He’s going to go to the Preakness,” Brown, a two-time winner of the Middle Jewel of the Triple Crown, said Tuesday morning at Churchill Downs. “The only thing is if something weird changes with the (Derby) field, a bunch of defections or something crazy, then I’ll take a look at it. I’m going to work him in New York Saturday. I can get him down here in time if I need to. But right now, I’d rather go to the Preakness with the horse.”
All Kentucky Derby entrants must be at Churchill Downs by 11 a.m. ET Saturday, the day entries are taken.

Iron Honor has only raced at Aqueduct in his three starts: a six-furlong maiden win, the mile Gotham victory and a seventh-place finish (beaten a total of 4 1/4 lengths) as the Wood Memorial favorite on April 4.

“I like the six weeks rest for him,” said Brown, a five-time winning of the Eclipse Award as North America’s outstanding trainer. “He’s coming off a disappointing finish and a tough, tough trip. But also, there’s a few changes I want to make with that horse. I’m going to take the blinkers off him. He’s starting to get a little aggressive in them. Once he got hit in the first turn of that race, the jockey, Manny Franco, told me he tried to pull and half run off down the backside. He was fighting with him, kind of wore him out. Not the prep you need to run in the Kentucky Derby, that’s for sure.

“Unfortunate, because I quite liked the horse coming in. He’s come out of that race, done one maintenance work with Preakness in mind,” he continued, referencing an April 18 half-mile work in 49 seconds at Belmont Park. “He went really well. I’ve had success doing that before, coming out of the Wood Memorial. Both the Preakness winners I’ve had were out of the Wood. Both of them got beat in the Wood, and they had that six-week rest and I was able to get them there really ready for a top effort. That’s what I’m going to try to do with this horse.”

Brown won the 2017 Preakness with Cloud Computing (third in the Wood) and again in 2022 with Early Voting (the Wood runner-up). As would be the case with Iron Honor, the 1 3/16-mile Preakness was those horses’ fourth lifetime start.
Iron Honor is a $475,000 Keeneland September yearling by 2016 Kentucky Derby winner and third-place Preakness finisher Nyquist. He’s campaigned by St. Elias Stable, William H. Lawrence and Glassman Racing. Lawrence co-owned Cloud Computing.

Brown is a huge fan of the Preakness.

“I’ve had a couple of nice winners. I’ve had a tough defeat, lost a photo one time to National Treasure over there,” he said of the 2023 Preakness that Blazing Sevens lost by a head after a stretch-long duel. “So I’ve had highs and lows over there. A little interesting going to Laurel this year, which will be different. I used to really love going to Pimlico. But a lot of history around the race, … one of the oldest trophies in sports, the Woodlawn Vase. If you’re lucky enough to win, it’s quite an honor when you get to hold that.”

Brown said no decision has been made on whether to run Three Chimneys’ Ottinho, second behind 11-length winner Further Ado in Keeneland’s Toyota Blue Grass (G1), in the Preakness or Aqueduct’s May 9 Peter Pan (G3). He said running Iron Honor in the Preakness will have no bearing on where Ottinho goes.

“I’ll run as many as I can in a race if I think it gives each individual horse a chance to win,” he said.

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