Brown Betty

Brown Betty (known in the United States as Brown Betty II, 1930 – after 1937) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and broodmare. She was one of the best of an exceptional crop of juvenile fillies in 1932 when she won her last four races including the Cheveley Park Stakes. In the following spring he recorded her biggest victory when she took the 1000 Guineas. She ran disappointingly when fourth in the Epsom Oaks but went on to win the Richemount Stakes and finished second in both the Nassau Stakes and the Park Hill Stakes. She was retired from racing at the end of her second season and exported to become a broodmare in the United States. Background Brown Betty was a bay or brown mare with a white star bred in the United Kingdom by Sir Alec Black. As a yearling she was offered for sale and bought for 1,600 guineas by Cecil Boyd-Rochfort on behalf of the American banker William Woodward Sr. The filly was taken into training by Boyd-Rochfot at his Feemason Lodge stable in Newmarket, Suffolk. Woodward reportedly named Brown Betty after Boyd-Rochfort's niece, Betty McCall. Physically, Brown Betty was described as "a filly of exquisite quality, of great length without being long in the back, and of a hard,dark bay colour that adds materially to her beauty." The French trainer Frank Carter described her as the finest looking filly he had ever seen. She was sired by George V's stallion Friar Marcus who won the Middle Park Stakes in 1914 and went on to become a successful sprinter. Brown Betty was his only classic winner although he was the damsire of Bahram. Her dam Garpal was a granddaughter of Santa Brigida (foaled 1898), a British broodmare who was the female-line ancestor of numerous major winners including Alcibiades, Mid-day Sun and Sun Stream. Garpal was bought by Alec Black for 3100 guineas from he breeder Lord Derby but sustained a fractured pelvis shortly afterwards and narrowly avoided being euthanised owing to the intervention of a veterinary surgeon. Racing career