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The Brigadier Gerard Stakes is a Group 3 flat horse race in Great Britain open to horses aged four years or older. It is run at Sandown Park over a distance of 1 mile 1 furlong and 209 yards (2,002 metres), and it is scheduled to take place each year in late May or early June.
Brigadier Gerard began his career as a two-year-old on 24 June 1970, in the Berkshire Stakes at Newbury. The race was run on good ground over five furlongs and attracted a field of five runners including three previous winners. Brigadier Gerard was ridden by Joe Mercer and was relatively unfancied at odds of 100/7.
Vayrann was a brown horse with a large white star and a white coronet on his left hind foot [2] officially bred by his owner Aga Khan IV in Ireland. He was one of the best horses sired by Brigadier Gerard who won seventeen of his eighteen races between 1970 and 1972 and is rated the second-best British-trained racehorse since 1947 (after Frankel) by the independent Timeform organisation.
The Westbury Stakes continued to be staged in May or June until 1973. That year's edition took place at Kempton Park. [2] Its date was switched with that of the Brigadier Gerard Stakes in 1974, and from this point it was held in April. [3] The race was given its present title in 1987.
Poet's Word (foaled 5 April 2013) is an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred racehorse and breeding stallion. He showed useful but unremarkable form in his first two seasons before developing into a high-class performer at the age of four when he won the Glorious Stakes as well as finishing second in both the Irish Champion Stakes and the Champion Stakes.
The inaugural running was won by Roberto, that year's Derby winner. The second-placed horse was Brigadier Gerard – his only defeat in a career of eighteen races. The sponsorship of Benson and Hedges continued until 1985, and for the following two years the event was backed by the bloodstock company Matchmaker.
As a four-year-old he won the Brigadier Gerard Stakes, Coronation Stakes and Prince of Wales's Stakes in the first half of the season before succumbing to a respiratory infection. At five he was unbeaten in three races, taking the Westbury Stakes and a second Prince of Wales's Stakes before ending his racing career with a win in the Eclipse Stakes.
In 2020, he won the Land O'Burns Fillies' Stakes and was second in another Nunthorpe on Que Amora, losing out to Battaash, and across 2020 and 2021 he won three Group 3s including the Brigadier Gerard Stakes on the Jim Goldie-trained Euchen Glen. Azure Blue, another Michael Dods horse, gave him Listed and Group 2 success in 2023.