Kilwin’s 2025 goal: G2 Music City, with G1 Test the prep
Published 4:44 pm Friday, September 5, 2025
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Kilwin wins last year’s $1 million Untapable Stakes under Jose Lezcano. She’ll be ridden by Jose Ortiz in Saturday’s $2 million Music City (G2) at Kentucky Downs in Franklin. (KURTIS COADY / Coady Media)
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Brilliant Berti and jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. win Churchill Downs’ G2, $500,000 Wise Dan in his last start. (CHRISTINE HAYDEN / Coady Media)
FRANKLIN — Here’s how much trainer Rusty Arnold points for Kentucky Downs’ seven-day all-turf meet: He made his hotel reservations six months ago.
One stakes at Kentucky Downs has been on his radar a lot longer than that: He’s planned on bringing BBN Racing’s Kilwin for the $2 million, Grade 2 AGS Music City for 3-year-old filly sprinters ever since BBN Racing’s filly won last year’s $1 million Untapable Stakes over the course. The Music City has been the target to the extent that Arnold and BBN ran Kilwin in Saratoga’s Grade 1 Test at seven furlongs on dirt in large part as a means to get back to Kentucky Downs. Winner of Churchill Downs’ Leslie’s Lady Overnight Stakes in her first start on dirt, Kilwin stumbled badly to her knees in the Test but recovered and rallied from last to win.
“You’re happy with it, but it wasn’t going to change our plans going where we wanted to go,” said Arnold, who also had beaten favorite Echo Sound in the Test. “We’ve been zeroing in on the Music City all year. Just the timing was good with the Test. We thought about going different places with her, thought about going to the Monmouth Oaks a week earlier. I think I was just trying to separate my two fillies.
“Kilwin had been training great, her breezes were great. She acted like she belonged, her numbers said she belonged,” he continued, adding of BBN co-founder and racing manager Braxton Lynch, “In the end, I think Braxton wanted to go to the Test. I said, ‘Look, the only negative for me going to the Test is I have another filly in there. But it’s not fair to her for me to keep her out of it because of that, so let’s take her.’ ”
Kilwin from her No. 2 post stumbled so badly that jockey Jose Ortiz stayed on with sheer athleticism.
“We were watching the race on TV. She’s not real big, and she was between two horses and went down so quick you didn’t know what happened,” Arnold said. “I didn’t know if she just got away bad. I couldn’t tell. When it happened, I’ve got to be honest, I was watching my other horse most of the race. Her ‘chiclet’ didn’t even make the screen until the quarter pole. It was kind of like what the announcer said, ‘Even Kilwin is back in the race!’ When I went down after the racetrack, I still hadn’t seen the stumble. Jose said, ‘Well, we got lucky. I barely stayed on her. She went to her knees at the gate.’ ”
Kilwin rallied from near-last to take the 6 1/2-furlong Untapable after winning her debut at 5 1/2 furlongs at Ellis Park. She ended her season with a fifth place in the mile Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1) after pressing the pace.
The Twirling Candy filly started her 3-year-old season with a pair of 5 1/2-furlongs turf stakes, finishing a reasonably competitive sixth (beaten 3 1/2 lengths) in Keeneland’s Limestone and second by 4 1/4 lengths in Churchill Downs’ Mamzelle (G3). Both races were won by 3-1 Music City favorite Shisospicy. Kilwin is the Music City’s 4-1 second choice.
“Shisospicy is a freak of a filly,” Lynch said. “That’s when we were thinking, ‘Do we stretch her out on grass? Or just go for that middle distance, seven furlongs, on Churchill and run her on the dirt?’ We had said we’d wanted to try her on dirt, ‘so let’s do it now.’ And then we end up in the Test!”
“We said, ‘If we’re going to try the dirt, this is the time to do it,’ ” Arnold said of the Leslie’s Lady. “ ‘We’ve been beaten twice on the turf. We have all year to make a plan to get to the Music City. So let’s go here in our own backyard.’ It just fell together.”
Arnold has been running at Kentucky Downs since 1998, when he went 2 for 2 in a maiden and allowance race. The purses were $23,000 and $25,000. Today those same race conditions go for $170,000 and $190,000 for Kentucky-breds, which is most of Arnold’s barn.
“It’s hard to comprehend that I have a filly that just won the Test, Grade 1 at Saratoga, and I’m going to run her down there for like four of those (in purse size),” Arnold said. “Four of them! It’s just hard to wrap your head around it.”
But to win, Kilwin will have to defeat Shisospicy for the first time.
“I think the distance is going to help us out a little bit, 6 1/2 (starting) up the hill,” Arnold said. “Hopefully, it will make a difference. But she’s doing well. Very well.”
Depending on Saturday’s outcome, Arnold is considering running Kilwin back on dirt in her next start after the Music City: in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at seven-eighths of a mile. The $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, in addition to being against older males, is at five-eighths of a mile at Del Mar.
“We won’t back up,” Arnold said. “The whole thing got thrown into a ‘mess’ when she ran good on dirt. This was the plan all year to get to this race. But we didn’t know exactly how we’d get there. We turned in the middle of how we were going to do that. We were going to run her in a couple of mile turf races. When she won the Leslie’s Lady, we had to try her (in the Test) and she won. Now you’re dealing with being undefeated on the dirt and running them on the grass. I’d suspect we would go back to seven-eighths on the dirt.
“But I’m worried about Saturday right now.”
Mint Millions: No place like home for Brilliant Berti
Klein Racing’s 4-year-old colt Brilliant Berti not only claims a home-course advantage in Saturday’s $2.5 million FanDuel TV Mint Millions, he has a decided home-state advantage.
The Cherie DeVaux-trained Brilliant Berti won last year’s then $1.5 million Gun Runner (this year worth $2 million) at Kentucky Downs. And his subsequent victories in Keeneland’s Bryan Station (G3) to end his 3-year-old campaign and wins in Churchill Downs’ $350,000 Opening Verse and Grade 2 Wise Dan have Brilliant Berti 7 for 8 in Kentucky. The lone lost, second by a neck after Brilliant Berti found himself on the lead and out of his running style, came in Churchill Downs’ G3 Arlington Stakes won by Mercante, who runs in Saturday’s $2.5 million KTDF Kentucky Turf Cup at 1 1/2 miles.
The only times Brilliant Berti has been worse than second in 11 career starts was his career debut last year at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and when he started this year with an eighth — though beaten only four lengths off a five-month layoff — back in New Orleans in the 1 1/8-mile Muniz Memorial (G2). Brilliant Berti’s other out-of-state start was last year at Colonial Downs, when he was second in the Secretariat (G2) to the well-regarded Trikari, after which he won the Gun Runner.
No wonder Richard Klein, who heads his family’s Klein Racing, considers his Breeders’ Cup for Brilliant Berti the two-race sequence of the Mint Millions and the Grade 1, $1.25 million Coolmore Turf Mile at Keeneland next month.
“I’m not interested in going out West, with its short stretch” at Del Mar, site of the Breeders’ Cup, he said. “The next two races are our Breeders’ Cup races. Somebody said to me, ‘Why don’t you go to New York? Why didn’t you go to the Fourstardave?’ I’m thinking, you don’t have to leave the state of Kentucky anymore. You have two Grade 1 stakes at Keeneland, one in spring and fall, for older turf milers. Right in the middle, you can go in the Opening Verse or the Arlington or Wise Dan. If you want to, you can run at Ellis Park (for $250,000). There’s no need to go anymore.”
And, by the way, Brilliant Berti has earned $2.17 million — tops in the field — by staying home. “He never gets big (speed figure) numbers in these races,” Klein said. “He just does one thing: He wins. He just knows how to run.”
Brilliant Berti, with regular rider Brian Hernandez up, is 8-1 in the morning line for the Mint Millions’ field of 13, with Kentucky Downs’ opening-day Keeneland Sales Tapit Stakes winner Lagynos the 4-1 favorite. Brilliant Berti has beaten Lagynos the four times they’ve met, including three victories. But Klein isn’t worried about betting odds.
“We like the way he’s coming into the race,” Klein said, adding of former trainer David Carroll, a top assistant based in Lexington for DeVaux, “David Carroll has been with him all summer because Cherie has been up at Saratoga. He’s done a great job with him and says he’s ready to go, and he’s happy with all his breezes. His coat looks good. He’s a happy horse right now.
“I think it’s a competitive, strong race, whoever gets the trip and likes the course on that day. But I think there’s enough speed in there to help a horse like Berti who wants to sit off the pace or a little bit farther back. Cherie has always thought a mile was his best distance, as opposed to a mile and a sixteenth.
“I’m excited for the race. You run for $2.5 million, anybody’s got a shot to win. But I like what we’re bringing into the race.”