Brisset Could Follow Walden's Belmont Training Success

Twenty-four years ago, a Belmont Stakes (G1) victory from Prestonwood Farm's Victory Gallop helped further the horse racing career of trainer Elliott Walden, who would later become the president and CEO of WinStar Farm.

Now a colt owned in partnership by WinStar, We the People , could elevate the career of trainer Rudy Brisset with a victory in the $1.5 million Belmont June 11. We the People, favored at 2-1 odds on the morning line, is forecasted to be roughly half the price of the 9-2 odds on Victory Gallop in 2018 when Walden's colt denied Real Quiet's bid for the Triple Crown by nipping him by a nose on the wire under Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens.

Victory Gallop's Belmont came in Walden's 14th year as a trainer.

Brisset arrived in the Belmont five years after he began training in May 2017 following a number of years as an exercise rider and assistant for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. 

During part of his time with Mott, Drosselmeyer  took the 2010 Belmont for WinStar Farm. That triumph was one of three Belmont winners for WinStar, either solely or in partnership, with the other victors being Creator  (2016) and Triple Crown winner Justify   (2018).

"It's not been easy every day," Brisset said of his training career. "But usually what you've done as an assistant trainer kind of sticks with you, but (it) doesn't mean you can translate that as a trainer. So we started back at the bottom of the ladder and got back up a little bit. It's been fun.

"Obviously, we got support from good horse owners and good groups of owners. It helps when you get good horses around."

Those types of horses are part of his current stable, led by WinStar Farm, Bobby Flay, CMNWLTH, and Siena Farm's We the People, runaway winner of the Peter Pan Stakes (G3), and Sekie and Tsunebumi Yoshihara's Yuugiri , who captured the Fantasy Stakes (G3) before weakening to 13th in the May 6 Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1). Flay, who teamed with WinStar in Creator, joined in ownership in We the People leading up to the Belmont.

Besides these owners, Brisset also trains some horses for a group known as the "Avengers"—a partnership involving SF Racing, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, Siena Farm, Golconda Stable, and other entities. He picked up additional horses for them this spring when Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert began serving a 90-day suspension for a medication violation with Medina Spirit  in last year's Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve (G1).

"They know how the business goes. So it makes things very easy for me," Brisset said of many of his owners. "It's a little bit more pressure, maybe because they have a lot of money involved, and they are powerful owners."

Brisset will ride some of his horses in the mornings and has been a regular workout partner aboard We the People.

Walden said he has known Brisset since the former's days as a trainer, which continued into 2005 before he took his position at WinStar. Walden then became even more familiar with Brisset while he assisted Mott, noting that Brisset traveled at times to race WinStar Farm, Wachtel Stable, and Gary Barber's Tourist, winner of the 2016 Breeders' Cup Mile (G1T) at Santa Anita Park.

"He's been around a long time. I always respected him as a horseman, as a rider," Walden said. "He kind of had an arrangement for us. We had the Polytrack on the (farm's) training center, wanted to get them some dirt experience. So we would shuttle a few through Keeneland. That's where he had some early paces with Life Is Good  and Justify. We got them up to breezing. So then he carried them on for a couple breezes before we sent them out. He was fine with that arrangement, being a young trainer.

"He has continued to gain our confidence in how he has handled the horses, places them, and how he manages them."

Though now knowledgeable regarding U.S. racing, that wasn't always the case, the French-born Brisset acknowledged. 

WATCH: Brisset Talks Training Career, We the People in Belmont

When he arrived in the U.S. 20 years ago, "the only thing I knew about American racing was Breeders' Cup weekend (that) we saw in France," he said. "I didn't have any history about the dirt or anything. It took me five or six years to study everything, to try to learn the history, and how racing has been run on the dirt and everything. And obviously around good horses with Mott was helpful, too. I think I've caught up pretty good now."

He need only look to Walden to gain some further Belmont knowledge given Walden's involvement in four Belmont winners.

Walden is quick to smile in recalling WinStar's three-race success in the Belmont, one with a Triple Crown winner, and Victory Gallop's thrilling win so long ago.

"All the experience I've had, over 40 years in the business, it's one of the top 10 races of all time, not just because we won it," Walden said of the 1998 Belmont, one of only three renewals of the historic race decided by a nose.

As for Brisset, he looks to make his own memories with his second starter in a Triple Crown race with the speedy We the People. Quip  ran last of eight for him and owners WinStar Farm, China Horse Club International, and SF Racing in the 2018 Preakness Stakes (G1) behind Justify.

"If we end up winning this one, it will be one down, two to go," Brisset said with a smile, referring to his career goals.