DEL: Maida, Quint’s Brew find the water fine
Bounce back with stakes wins after facing top-level rivals
Frank Vespe
October 17, 2026
A pair of runners who swam in the deepest waters last time out found the company a bit more congenial Saturday afternoon at Delaware Park.
Maida, cooked as part of the pace in the Grade 1 Ballerina at Saratoga Aug. 29, and Quint’s Brew, a game second to champion sprinter Book’em Danno in the Mr. Prospector at Monmouth Park July 17, registered popular victories in Delaware’s closing day stakes, the $100,000 Wilimington for the boys and the $200,000 Endine for fillies and mares. Both were at six furlongs.
Were their connections relieved? Not precisely. Confident coming in, you might say, but still happy to get the win.
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“We gave her plenty of time to kind of get back right,” said Brittany Russell, who trains Maida for Harry Papaleo’s Goodfellas LLC. “You know, I had confidence in her of how she was training.”
Maida, a winner in five of her first seven starts including the Grade 2 Honorable Miss, had battled it out in blazing fractions in the Ballerina before packing it in in late stages. The bettors had no concerns today – she went off at 4-5 – but Russell noted it was a tougher field than you might expect for an ungraded, Mid-Atlantic stakes race. Including Maida, five graded winners were among the 13 runners initially entered, and four of them faced the starter.
The graded winners included the Bob Baffert-trained Cash Call, the Saffie Joseph-trained millionaire Mystic Lake, and Butch Reid trainee Kappa Kappa.
“I saw there were 13 of them. We’ve drawn 11,” Russell said. “You got Baffert. You got three Saffies. I’m like, ‘Come on with this.’ I said, ‘We’re all doing the same thing here: $200,000 is still juicy, right?’”
With Brittany’s husband Sheldon Russell in the irons, Maida was perched outside and a couple of lengths off a battling lead trio of Mystic Lake, Cash Call, and longshot For the Ladies through the early running. She spun wide off the turn and powered past pace survivor Mystic Lake to win by two.
It was a bit of new dimension for a horse who’s done most of her best work on the front end.
“I left it up to him, and he said he said to me, ‘I’m gonna break her sharp and try and get her a good position, but I’m not gonna gun for it,’” Brittany Russell said. “And I said, ‘You do you.’ He knows her; he’s won on her, and he also sat on her when it didn’t go well.”
It certainly went well today.
One race prior, Quint’s Brew came from even farther back to prevail in the Wilmington by a neck for his ninth win in 16 starts. With Chipotle, Scorching, and Fire Pit slugging it out up top, Quint’s Brew lagged in seventh and several lengths back before rallying nine-wide for the win.
“I wasn’t trying to be that far back,” said winning rider Forest Boyce. “The track was real heavy today, and you know, I think the mud’s stinging them a little more than it normally does. Luckily, he came running once I really started asking.”
Quint’s Brew’s prior start had come against last year’s champion sprinter, the redoubtable New Jersey-bred Book’em Danno. Though Book’em Danno was off in that race at 1-9, Quint’s Brew, a five-year-old Mosler gelding, proved a tough customer, slugging it out with the champ before going down to a 1 ¼-length defeat.
“I mean, that race, I just I couldn’t believe how well he ran that,” Boyce said. “Like he’s a nice horse, but Book’em Danno is the champion and he made that horse work for it.”
For his part, trainer Ned Allard was happy to get his star back in action, and back to the winner’s circle.
“All the credit goes to this horse,” Allard said. “This is the kind of horse that makes the trainer.”
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