Brant returns in Maxfield Stakes as Baffert seeks rebound

Brant gets his next chance to prove the San Felipe was a stumble, not a ceiling, when Bob Baffert sends him into Sunday’s $250,000 Maxfield Stakes at Churchill Downs. The question is bigger than a comeback run. It is whether a colt who once looked like one of the country’s best juveniles can get back into serious 3-year-old stakes conversation before the summer turns.

The Maxfield is carded as Race 9 with a 4:56 p.m. ET post, closing a Sunday program that also includes the Hanshin Stakes, Bashford Manor and Debutante, with first post at 12:45 p.m. The race is for 3-year-olds at seven furlongs on dirt, limited to 14 starters, and gives a 3-pound allowance to horses that have not won a Grade I or Grade II stakes. Brant is assigned 123 pounds and breaks from post 4 with Flavien Prat back aboard.

Baffert has seen the upside already. Brant, by Gun Runner out of the Liam’s Map mare Tynan, burst out of the gate last year with a 5 1/4-length maiden win and then took the Del Mar Futurity by one length in 1:21.92. That Futurity victory also put $30,000 in Breeders’ Cup Dirt Dozen starting-fee credits toward the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, where Brant later finished third to complete a strong 2-year-old season. He is the first foal out of Tynan, a half-sister to stakes winners Pappacap and Boppy O, so the pedigree has never been the issue. The follow-through has.

That became clear on March 7 in the San Felipe Stakes, when Brant went off as the 4-5 favorite and finished fifth behind Potente, who stopped the clock in 1:42.92 at Santa Anita Park. Baffert now has to find out whether that race was a warning sign or simply a flat spot in a longer campaign. The Maxfield field also includes Igniter, Spun D M C, Oscar’s Hope, American Man, Prize Pick, Deep Flame and Crown the Buckeye, enough depth to make sure Brant will have to earn every inch back.

The race itself carries the name of a horse that understood top-level stakes company. Maxfield, owned by Godolphin, won the 2019 Breeders’ Futurity and the 2021 Clark Stakes, earned $2,001,812 and became the first horse to sweep Churchill Downs’ Alysheba, Stephen Foster and Clark in the same calendar year. Brant is now chasing a different kind of milestone, one that says he is not just back from the sidelines but back where the division has to take him seriously.