BY BROCK SHERIDAN
OCTOBER 12, 1986—Dolly Green’s Florida-bred Brave Raj won her fourth consecutive stakes in taking the $400,000 My Dear Girl, the final leg of the fillies division of the Florida Stallion Stakes at Calder Race Course. Trainer Mel Stute used the My Dear Girl as a final prep for the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita less than three weeks later—a race Brave Raj won by a commanding five-and-a-half lengths.
With jockey Patrick Valenzuela aboard in the My Dear Girl, Brave Raj chased 100-1 longshot B. B’s Beep Beep through the first half mile in :48 1/5 before taking over in the second turn. She cruised home to win the mile-and-a-sixteenth My Dear Girl by a length-and-three-quarters ahead of Added Elegance in second with Blues Court third.
The final time was 1:48 1/5 on the fast track and Brave Raj paid $3 to win as the odds-on favorite.
Purchased privately by Green for $300,000 after Stute saw her break her maiden by seven-and-a-half lengths at Garden State Park in May, Brave Raj then finished fifth in the Grade 3 Landaluce at Hollywood Park in July and second in the Junior Miss on Aug. 6 at Del Mar.
She won the Grade 3 Sorrento and Grade 2 Del Mar Debutante later in August before returning to her native Florida to take the second division of the $75,000 Florida Stallion Stakes Susan’s Girl by four-and-a-half lengths on Sept. 21.
After the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies victory, Brave Raj ended the year with a fifth-place finish against her male counterparts in the Grade 1 Hollywood Futurity at Hollywood Park on Dec. 14. She came up lame a week later and was retired with earnings of $933,650, a record at the time for 2-year-old fillies.
She would be honored with an Eclipse Award as the 1986 Champion 2-Year-Old Filly.
It was the second straight year a Florida-bred was named the champion 2-year-old filly after Tasso took the honors in 1985. Other Florida-breds named Champion 2-Year-Old Filly include My Dear Girl (1959), Process Shot (1968), Forward Gal (1970), Dearly Precious (1975), It’s in the Air (1978), Meadow Star (1990), Awesome Feather (2010) and Caledonia Road (2017).
After selling to BBA (England) for $500,000 at the 1987 Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale, Brave Raj spent her years as a broodmare at Warren Rosenthal’s Patchen Wilkes Farm in Lexington, Ky., She produced 10 winners, including stakes-winners Russian Tango, by Nijinsky II; and Bravo Bull, Holy Bull.
Brave Raj was by Rajab out of Bravest Yet, by Bravo and was bred in Florida by Dr. W. S. Karutz. She was a graduate of the 1986 Ocala Breeders’ Sales Two Year Old Sale held in February where trainer Ben Perkins purchased her for $24,000 out of Dr. Karutz’s Bourbon Hills Farm as agent consignment.
