PETER Brant stood square in the middle of the clubhouse box, watching the waning strides of the Diana replay on the infield screen at Saratoga last Saturday.

Chad Brown leaned from a back-wall chair, watching on a corner TV, in the adjacent box. The owner cringed and the trainer contorted, both hoping to somehow affect a photo finish that would produce a deserving winner and a hard-luck loser in the Grade 1 thriller.

Live, Brant thought Sistercharlie got beat, Brown wasn’t sure. As the stewards examined the photo of Ultra Brat hanging tough on the rail and Sistercharlie swarming from the outside, Brant and Brown analysed the replay once, twice, three times.

“She got it,” Brant said, a tepid declaration while looking for confirmation from his friends.

“I think she got it,” Brown said quietly, moments after asking the only impartial person in range if she had indeed got it.

She got it.

Sistercharlie and John Velazquez nailed Ultra Bat and Joel Rosario in the final stride to win the $500,000 stakes by a nose. A Raving Beauty wound up third in the nine-furlong race.

Sent off favourite, Sistercharlie made her bed early, missing the break from the rail and sliding to second-to-last in a matter of strides. Her stablemate, A Raving Beauty broke sharply and led before Hawksmoor cleared her six rivals from the outside post. Proctor’s Ledge failed to hammer her stake, winding up on the rail in fifth while Velazquez cajoled Sistercharlie off the rail, six lengths off the lead through a half-mile in :47.77.

Around the far turn, Hawskmoor led Ultra Brat by two lengths as Javier Castellano aimed New Money Honey outside and Irad Ortiz committed A Raving Beauty inside.

Velazquez, monitoring their moves, knew he had one shot and that was around, that plan was playing out perfectly until A Raving Beauty checked and Castellano gunned New Money Honey three wide.

“I was watching Javier, I was watching Irad hoping he doesn’t get through there or we’re screwed. I got to Javier, hoping he moved forward to close the hole but he went further out than I thought he would,” Velazquez said.

“She doesn’t have a quick spurt, it takes her a little bit to get going, once she gets going, it’s fine, it’s just getting her going. They just floated me out and she reacted, thank God, I didn’t have to stop her, I was riding her, but it took her momentum.”

But, not for long.

Swinging into the stretch, Ultra Brat pounced, opening a quick and decisive two lengths on Hawksmoor hanging tough on the rail, A Raving Beauty and New Money Honey sparring between horses and Sistercharlie grinding away and getting there from the outside. Velazquez switched his whip to his left hand and Sistercharlie finally swapped to her right lead inside the eighth pole and began to power home in the last eight strides.

Ultra Brat went from looking home free to needing the wire in those eight strides, the two fillies landing on the line together in 1:46.26.

Brant didn’t know. Brown didn’t know. And Velazquez certainly didn’t know.

SWITCH LEADS

“Absolutely not. I was so far away from the horse inside, I couldn’t tell. It took her a long time to switch leads, I was like, ‘Come on mama, you’ve got to freaking give me a little more than this.’”

Bred in Ireland by Ecurie Des Monceaux and raced in France, Sistercharlie won three races, including a Group 3, before Brant purchased her. She finished second in Brant’s forest and light green silks in the Group 1 Prix de Diane in France before being transferred to Brown.

The daughter of Myboycharlie finished second in the Belmont Oaks Invitational in her American debut last summer before taking a nine-month break, returning to win the Jenny Wiley at Keeneland in April.

“She just doesn’t break well and then she gets too far out of it. I don’t know why, she stands perfect, she’s really good in the gate, it’s the European thing, it’s how they taught her over there, the doors open and she doesn’t react,” Velazquez said. “You hustle her, it takes four or five steps to get her going.”

“I was nervous, a little frustrated when she didn’t break well, then when she wouldn’t switch leads there in the midstretch, I was like, ‘How’s she going to get there?’” Chad Brown said. “Well, she got there, I don’t know how she got there, she showed heart, class, determination, she’s a top horse.”

Brant ranks Sistercharlie at the top of the list of horses he’s owned, a long list that includes $3 million earner Gulch and 14-time winner Waya (co-owned with George Strawbridge Jr.). She won the 1978 Diana, the first in a four-race skein that included the Man o’ War and Turf Classic.

“This filly is as good as I’ve had, she’s really good,” Brant said from the winner’s circle. “I didn’t think she was going to make it but she’s got that great turn of foot at the end and she’s tough.”