The TRM Trainer of the Quarter - Jim Brown

N AN age when Thoroughbreds rarely make more than nine starts in a year, June Dunte’s six-year-old gelding A Lasting Peace has been an exception, a durable and versatile exception, one who has made 49-year-old Jim Brown’s 30th year as a trainer special. “He’s a versatile horse, the most versatile horse I’ve had,” Brown said. A Lasting Peace is also one of his most successful horses Brown has ever trained. A Lasting Peace’s seven-length repeat victory in the non-black-type Similkameen Cup Stakes at Sunflower Downs in Princeton, British Columbia, in his last start June 29th was his fifth win in his last six races and his 13th in his last 22 starts. And his best races may still be ahead of him. “He’s still improving,” Brown said. Since Brown took over his training in the spring of 2012, A Lasting Peace has made at A Lasting Peace’s ongoing success has carried Brown to just under $5 million in career earnings. Brown spends most of the year at Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver, British Columbia, and winters at Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Arizona. He wasn’t A Lasting Peace’s original trainer. “I met the woman who owns him a year and a half ago,” Brown said. “She wanted to try him at Vancouver.” It didn’t take long for Brown to figure out he could improve the horse. ”The guy who had been training him was training him tied to the end of a pick-up truck,” Brown said. “We brought him down here last spring and he responded right away, within the first two to three weeks. He’s a great big, good-looking horse. He just seemed to thrive. Everything we’ve done with him, he seems to handle.” Brown began handling horses on his own at the age of 19. “My family wasn’t really involved in racing,” he said. “I just liked the thrill of horseracing.” least one start in 14 of 15 months. His only miss was last October. He began this year with a two-length win in a $3,000 starter allowance at Turf Paradise on January 13th, and has seven victories and one third in 11 starts in 2013. In the spring of 2012, after finishing second twice and fifth in his first three starts for Brown, A Lasting Peace found the winner’s circle in races stretching from five furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth at three different racetracks in Canada and the United States. Though he can race from off the pace, A Lasting Peace won the mile-and-a-sixteenth Similkameen Cup, named for a historic region near Princeton tracing back to British Columbia’s earliest settlers, wire-to-wire at 1-5, the lowest odds the son of Where’s the Ring has ever gone off in his entire 38-race career. The victory improved his career record to 16 wins, four seconds, and three thirds in 38 starts with $88,613 in earnings. Brown carved out a remarkably consistent career. He had his first $100,000 year in earnings in 1995, which began a string of 14 consecutive years with six-figure earnings. His horses earned less than $100,000 for the next two years, but he’s bounced back with three consecutive years over that mark, including this year, with 14 victories, 12 seconds, and 13 thirds from 87 starts with half the year still remaining. “I’ve been blessed with good owners,” he said. “That’s a big part of it. And good horses and good help. That’s the main thing.” Horses like A Little Peace are a welcome bonus. His only poor race in his last dozen starts was his first, and likely his last, race on turf. Racing over one mile at Turf Paradise, he tired to twelfth. Since being returned to dirt, he’s won five of six. Brown said, “We thought he’d be a good horse and he turned out to be a wonderful horse.”

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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - NORTH AMERICAN TRAINER - ISSUE 29

TRM AWARDSWebmaster26 July 2013Jim Brown, Hastings Park, TRM Trainer of the Quarter