2025 Belmont Stakes Trainer Profile: Chad Brown

Key Takeaways:

• With an impressive history that includes 5 Eclipse Awards and 19 Breeders’ Cup wins, Chad Brown is one of the top U.S. trainers.
• Beyond that, he has also displayed his excellence in the Preakness Stakes with two wins (Cloud Computing, Early Voting); however, Brown has yet to win the Belmont despite having two top-three finishes.
• In 2025, Brown enters Hill Road in the Belmont Stakes, a late closer who won the Peter Pan Stakes and needs a solid pace to be most effective.

Chad Brown is one of the leading trainers in the United States. He got his start as an assistant to Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel, and then struck out on his own late in 2007. He quickly made a name for himself on his own, and has been one of the top North American trainers ever since. He has won outstanding trainer five times, with that fifth Eclipse Award coming in 2024.

In 2025, Brown has continued at the top of his game. He has won five Grade 1 races already: the Turf Classic (G1) and Pegasus World Cup Turf (G1) with Spirit of St Louis, the La Troienne (G1) with Raging Sea, the American Turf (G1) with Zulu Kingdom, and the Maker’s Mark Mile (G1) with Carl Spackler.

Many of Chad Brown’s best-known horses have been fillies and mares on the grass. Brown got his first graded-stakes win in 2008 with Maram in the Miss Grillo, a filly who would go on to win the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf that year as well. Other top horses who helped put him on the map include the durable Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf winner Stephanie’s Kitten, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winners like Lady Eli, Rushing Fall, New Money Honey, and Newspaperofrecord; and Uni, who beat the boys in the 2019 Breeders' Cup Mile.

Though Brown has made such a name for himself on the grass, he can train a top-class dirt horse as well. Five of his 19 Breeders’ Cup wins have come on dirt, including Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare sprint wins with Wavell Avenue and twice with Goodnight Olive, the Juvenile with Good Magic, and the 2024 Breeders’ Cup Classic with Sierra Leone.

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Chad Brown in Triple Crown Races

Brown’s history in Triple Crown races goes back to 2012, though it would be a few years before he had a horse finish in the money during the three-year-old classics. So far, he is best known for his record in the Preakness, which he has won twice.

Kentucky Derby

Brown has run nine horses in the Kentucky Derby, stretching back to fourth-place Normandy Invasion in 2013. He has yet to win the Run for the Roses, though three of his horses have hit the board in Churchill Downs’ flagship race. The closest he has come to a Kentucky Derby win was 2024, when Sierra Leone missed by just a nose to Mystik Dan. He had another second-place finisher in 2018, when Good Magic chased home Justify to claim a silver medal. His one other horse to hit the board in the Kentucky Derby was Zandon, who ran on for third behind Rich Strike in 2022.

If there is one thing to learn from this pattern, it is that a Brown trainee who wins the Blue Grass (G1) has a good chance to run well in the Kentucky Derby. After all, he has won Keeneland’s top Derby prep three times: with Good Magic, Zandon, and Sierra Leone.

Preakness Stakes

In the Triple Crown series, Brown has had his best success in the Preakness Stakes. With seven starters so far, he has won the race twice. His very first Preakness starter, Cloud Computing, had enough points to run in the Kentucky Derby, but Brown instead readied him for the Preakness. It paid off—Brown won with his first-ever Preakness starter. He took the same route of bypassing the Derby with a relatively inexperienced horse who had enough points in 2022 with Early Voting, and won the race again.

One other Brown trainee has hit the board in the Preakness. Blazing Sevens, a Grade 1-winning juvenile who finished third in the Blue Grass, was pointed to the 2023 race, where he missed by only a head to Preakness winner National Treasure.

Belmont Stakes

Despite the fact that Brown is such a fixture at Belmont Park, Aqueduct, and Saratoga Race Course, he has had significantly less presence in the Belmont Stakes compared to the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.

Brown has run four horses in the Belmont Stakes. Though he has yet to win the final jewel of the Triple Crown, two of his runners have hit the board.

The first was with his third runner in the race: Gronkowski, in 2018. Brown got Gronkowski, who had begun his career in England, for his first American start. Despite a slow start, Gronkowski ran on well in the late stages of the demanding 1 ½-mile trip at Belmont Park, chasing on to finish a clear second behind Triple Crown winner Justify.

Brown returned to the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival in 2024 with Sierra Leone, who was tabbed as the morning-line favorite after a nose miss to Mystik Dan in the Kentucky Derby. Sierra Leone’s deep-closing style made it a challenge, and the more forwardly placed Dornoch and Mindframe proved impossible to catch in the end. However, Sierra Leone made a good run at the end, giving Brown his second money finish in the race after he crossed the wire third, 1 ½ lengths behind Dornoch.

Chad Brown in the 2025 Belmont Stakes

Chad Brown is sending one horse to the Belmont Stakes in 2025: Hill Road, winner of the traditional local prep for the Belmont, the Peter Pan (G3).

Hill Road

Hill Road started his career for trainer Adrian Murray, graduating on debut on the lawn at Leopardstown in Ireland and then finishing seventh in the National Stakes (G1) at the Curragh, also on grass. Murray brought him stateside to try dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and that went well: he closed from last to finish third at 61-1 odds, with only Bob Baffert trainees Citizen Bull and Gaming ahead of him—a pair of horses who went 1-2 all the way around. After that, Hill Road was kept in the States and moved to the barn of Chad Brown.

Hill Road made his sophomore debut, and his debut for Brown, in the Tampa Bay Derby on March 8. Reprising that familiar style of running from last, he made up some position in the lane but could not catch the speedy horse-for-course Owen Almighty or his perhaps surprisingly more forwardly-placed stablemate Chancer McPatrick. He checked in third behind that pair.

Instead of keeping him on the Derby trail, Brown freshened Hill Road up and brought him back in the Peter Pan, a live prep race for the Belmont Stakes, on May 10. Settled toward the rear early after stumbling at the start, he bided his time under jockey Flavien Prat while favored Captain Cook set an honest early pace. McAfee got first run on the pacesetter, but Hill Road got the best run. Still 3 ½ lengths behind that pair with a furlong to go, he fought all the way to the finish, put his head in front a few jumps from the wire, and defeated McAfee by three-quarters of a length.

As usual, pace is the question with Hill Road in the Belmont Stakes. Brown knows how to train a long-distance horse, and the pedigree is there to stretch out to 1 ¼ miles, but the track has to be playing fairly to closers and he has to get enough pace to close into.

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