Chad Brown, winning trainer of Connected (No. 1) and second-place finisher Gift Box (No. 4): "This horse [Connected] is lightly raced but we've always thought a lot of him. He's developed in each race. Running two turns today and being the pacesetter to be able to hold on and prevail he showed a lot."

"Gift Box ran a good race as well. He's coming off a longer layoff so he might have needed this race and was stuck along the rail but he performed well. With both the horses running 1,2 in any order that's what we were hoping for. I hate to run them both against each other but with limited opportunities I thought this race worked out well for both of them as a prep heading towards the Travers."

Winning jockey John Velazquez aboard Connect (No. 1): "There was no speed in the race so we wanted to make sure he came out of there. He didn't jump out of there the way I wanted so I had to use him a little bit going into the first turn. Once I got him there I was happy where I was. I tried to slow down the best I could the first part of the race and let him run down the lane. I had to kind of get after him around the second turn. He was kind of drifting away from the horse inside of me. I was trying to keep that horse inside and keep the pressure on, and once he switched down the lane he ran away from the other horse."

"It was definitely my choice [to stay off the rail]. I wanted to be out of there. I didn't want to be on the rail. It seemed like every time you're on the rail all day long they don't finish very well. If you come off the rail a little bit they seem to respond a little bit better and it worked out this time."

"I was just trying to hold that horse in there for a while and the longer I held him in there the more confident I was because he had to run in the deep inside of me. I was like if I can hold him for a while there until the top of the stretch I'll be fine."