City Girl Springs Upset in Beaugay Stakes for First Graded Win

Chad Brown did not just win the Beaugay Stakes, he boxed the race with both of his fillies and mares. City Girl slipped through the mile-and-a-sixteenth on the outer turf at Belmont at the Big A on Sunday in 1:42.61, edged past stablemate Dynamic Pricing, and delivered Brown a Brown exacta in a Grade 3 worth $175,000.

The margin mattered less than the shape of the win. Mo Fox Given controlled only a moderate pace, which let Flavien Prat tuck City Girl into a relaxed trip along the rail from post 2 before angling her out for first run. Once Prat asked, the 5-year-old daughter of City Light responded cleanly and held off Dynamic Pricing, the defending Beaugay winner from 2025, who broke from the inside post with Irad Ortiz Jr. aboard. City Girl paid $9.02 to win.

That is the kind of race that can change a mare’s profile. City Girl had been absent for most of 2025, then resurfaced in Florida and worked her way back at Tampa Bay Downs before stepping up in class. She had already shown she belonged overseas, winning her maiden and an allowance in France and then missing a stakes score by a neck in the Prix Caravelle Haras des Granges. Sunday was her first North American stakes win and her first graded victory, and it came with the sort of composure that travels.

For Brown, it was more evidence that the New York turf division still runs through his barn. He was chasing a record-extending eighth Beaugay victory, and the list behind him already reads like a map of the race’s recent history: Waterway Run in 2014, A Raving Beauty in 2018, Homerique in 2019, Rushing Fall in 2020, Rougir in 2022 and Marketsegmentation in 2023. Dynamic Pricing’s runner-up finish only sharpened the point. Brown did not need a hot pace or a collapse to take control of the race, just two fillies who were fit, tactical and good enough to make the same stakes look like a stable workout.

The Beaugay entries closed April 18 with 23 original nominations and three supplements, and the field still landed with real quality at the top. City Girl’s breakthrough did more than add a line to her record. It gave Brown another live older turf mare in a division where pace, positioning and finishing punch matter every bit as much as raw speed.