#brass hat

Back in October of 2010, I went to Keeneland to see the running of the Sycamore Stakes, an annual grade 3 event that takes place near the end of the fall meet. As a grade 3 it usually doesn’t attract the top flight talent of the grade 1 Turf Mile or the Maker’s Mark that is run in the spring, but this particular year it attracted a different kind of star power in the form of a bay gelding named Brass Hat (top left, second row, bottom row photos). 

What made Brass Hat so special? Well, for starters, he was nine years old. An old man in racing terms, Brass Hat was unusual simply because he’d been around for so long. Thoroughbreds aren’t built to last, and even those special outliers that defy the age and wear and tear only get the chance once they have no value in the breeding shed.

Brass Hat was one of those rare exceptions to the rule: not only a horse who continued racing long after most of his colleagues had retired, but a horse who did it at the highest levels of the sport. He raced 39 times and won 10, 9 of them stakes races, including the Grade 1 Donn Handicap. Over the course of his career he overcame two serious injuries and won on dirt, turf, and synthetics - no small feat for any racehorse. By his retirement he’d earned over 2 million dollars, and a legion of fans who cheered his every step. 

When he raced in the Sycamore, he hadn’t won in 17 months, bringing an 8 race winning streak into the starting gate. It didn’t matter. On a beautiful day with the grandstand cheering him home, Brass Hat cruised past the wire an easy winner under 3-time Kentucky Derby winning jockey Calvin Borel (top right photo), in what would turn out to be his final race. In the process he beat another old man, the beautiful grey 8 year old Musketier (third row left), and the incredibly freakish grade 1 winner Presious Passion (third row right), whose win in the United Nations in 2009 and near miss in the Breeder’s Cup Turf were the stuff of legends. 

It was a storybook ending for a horse who brought a tremendous amount of joy to owner Fred Bradley and his son, Buff, who trained Brass Hat over the course of his career, and to the sport of racing, which is often defined by flashes of brilliance rather than the dogged grit of horses like this. So when we get them, we cherish them.