Sierra Leone

Peter M. Brant, Mrs. John Magnier, Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith, Westerberg, and Brook T. Smith’s Sierra Leone [post 9, Flavien Prat, 9-5ML] is two noses shy of a perfect 5-for-5 record.

Trained by four-time Eclipse Award-winner Chad Brown, the regally-bred Gun Runner colt made his first two starts at Aqueduct Racetrack with a first-out win in November and a narrow defeat in December to returning rival Dornoch in the Grade 2 Remsen after lugging in down the lane.

Sierra Leone added blinkers and was perfect through his first two starts this year, closing from deep to take the Grade 2 Risen Star over sloppy and sealed footing in February at Fair Grounds and the Grade 1 Blue Grass in April at Keeneland.

The $2.3 million Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Select Yearling Sale purchase, out of the Grade 1-winning Malibu Moon mare Heavenly Love, exited post 2-of-20 under Tyler Gaffalione in the Kentucky Derby and after saving ground early, rallied wide down the lane, bumping with Forever Young from the three-sixteenths to the furlong grounds. Sierra Leone and Forever Young, who share the same second dam in the multiple graded stakes-placed Darling My Darling, brushed to the wire with only a nose between them – but also a further nose back of the victorious Mystik Dan.

While the Derby winner continued to the Preakness, Sierra Leone, bred in Kentucky by Debby Oxley, has trained locally over the Oklahoma dirt training track with a new cage bit and on Saturday will have the services of a new rider in Flavien Prat.