Gun Runner’s champion Sierra Leone came from last to win Saturday’s $1 million Whitney S. (G1), earning the 4-year-old an automatic berth in this year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) Nov. 1 at Del Mar.
Gun Runner won the 2017 Whitney during his Horse of the Year campaign that culminated with a Breeders’ Cup win.
Now a three-time Grade 1 winner, Sierra Leone has earned $6,806,200 and is Gun Runner’s lifetime leading earner.
Unhurried out of the gate, Sierra Leone dropped back to last in the field of nine as longshots Mama’s Gold and Contrary Thinking battled through a half-mile in :47.07. The field began to bunch up going into the final turn. With the entire field in front of him, Sierra Leone had no choice but to go wide and was in the six path turning for home. Fierceness had taken over at the top of the stretch, but he was no match for Sierra Leone, who powered by with a furlong to go and came home a one-length winner over Highland Falls.
“I was happy with his position,” winning trainer Chad Brown said. “He was quite far back and I knew when those horses were stopping out in the center of the track, that he was going to have to catch a lot of dirt. What we know about the horse now is that he’s a long, outside-run horse, like he did in the Breeders’ Cup and in the (Kentucky) Derby and nearly won.”
“I would (consider the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup) because he hasn’t run that much this year,” Brown said of Sierra Leone’s path to the Breeders’ Cup. I’m not afraid to run this horse. I’m not afraid of running again, because if he comes out of it sound, I have a lot of time from the Jockey Club Gold Cup.”
Sierra Leone, who cost $2.3 million as a yearling, is owned by Peter M. Brant, Mrs. John Magnier, Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith, Westerberg and Brook T. Smith and was bred in Kentucky by Debby Oxley.
