Undefeated champion Awesome Feather is expected to make her season debut in an overnight stakes Oct. 5 at Belmont Park.
The 3-year-old daughter of Awesome of Course would be making her first start in 11 months in the seven-furlong Le Slew Stakes. Running for trainer Chad Brown for the first time, the bay filly is to carry 123 pounds while facing four rivals. Jeffrey Sanchez will have the mount.
When last seen on the track, Awesome Feather won the Grey Goose Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies (gr. I) last November at Churchill Downs for trainer Stanley Gold, making her perfect in six lifetime starts. A couple of months later she was named champion 2-year-old filly.
Awesome Feather was subsequently consigned to the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall 2010 mixed sale by Hidden Brook on behalf of Jacks or Better Farm. Purchased by Frank Stronach for $2.3 million, she was transferred to Brown. In January she was diagnosed with a tendon lesion and shelved for several months.
Awesome Feather has been training at Belmont with Brown for much of the summer. He said this first race back will give him an indication of her fitness.
“She's doing very well,” Brown said Sept. 30. “We’ve taken our time and kept a close eye on her from the time we started. We really had no timetable; we just let her heal and recover and gradually increased her training over the course of the summer. We didn’t push it.
“She looks good now. We just want to see how she comes out of this race. I know ‘one race at a time’ is a cliché, but that really is the case with her. We haven’t even discussed anything beyond this.”
Awesome Feather, who was bred in Florida by Jacks or Better Farm, is out of the Gone West mare Precious Feather. She has earned $1,495,746.