Chad Brown walked out of Friday night with a Kentucky Oaks victory and a fresh chance to make Saturday’s Kentucky Derby a double celebration. Now he sends Emerging Market to Churchill Downs with the five-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer saying, “I feel confident.”
Always A Runner won the Oaks by 1 1/4 lengths under the lights, giving Brown a lift before the Derby and reinforcing his belief that the barn is pointed the right way. Brown said his other horse was training just as well, and that the filly’s performance at Churchill Downs only sharpened his outlook for the colt.
Emerging Market was shelved during his 2-year-old campaign by the same illness that affected Always A Runner, a setback Brown said could easily have ended the filly’s path to the Oaks. Instead, she arrived unbeaten and delivered Friday’s result, while the colt comes in as a 15-1 choice after winning his February debut at Tampa Bay Downs by 1 3/4 lengths and then edging Pavlovian by a head in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby on March 21.
Brown has reason to believe the Derby stage can work for him. His two signature wins in the Triple Crown series have come in the Preakness, and he has finished second at Churchill Downs twice since 2018. He has also had Derby runners before, including Sierra Leone and Good Magic, but the race has remained the one major prize just out of reach.
That is the tension now. Brown said, “I stick with things that are working,” and that approach has him leaning into a colt set to break from the No. 15 post with Flavien Pratt aboard. The trainer said, “So, two starts, we should be good. But that’s another horse that's just doing well,” and he added that the Kentucky Oaks filly had been giving off the right signs all week at Churchill Downs. On Saturday, the question is whether that same feel carries over when Emerging Market runs for the finish Brown wants most.