ARCADIA, Calif. - When Maram scored a triumph in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita last year, her 11-1 upset paid tribute to the high level of horsemanship of her young trainer. Chad Brown, in his first year of training his own stable, chose to credit his mentor, Bobby Frankel, for his seemingly sudden success.

A year later, the 32-year-old Saratoga Springs, N.Y., native will saddle Maram for a start in today’s $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Santa Anita, and he still chooses to pay homage to the Hall of Fame trainer for whom he worked as an assistant for five years before going out on his own at the end of the 2007 season.

“The centerpiece of my whole operation is Bobby Frankel,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t even be here without him.”

Frankel, who is currently on the sidelines while battling a serious illness, had an apt pupil in Brown, who also worked for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey while attending Cornell University and for another year upon earning a degree in animal science.

“I thought I’d be a vet. I thought about it. I’m sure that’s what my parents wanted me to do, and not be a horse trainer. I wanted to try to learn as much from each area as I could - vet, science, training - whatever it was, I tried to work in every area I could before I went out on my own,” Brown said. “I hit a lot of areas; I worked for sales consigners; I worked for a vet; I worked for McGaughey; I worked for Frankel; I went to Cornell; I worked in a vet hospital; I tried to hit every angle I could to learn as much as I could.”

Brown has proven to be far more than a one-hit wonder this year while saddling winners at a 22 percent clip, primarily on the New York circuit.

“I may apply something I learned from Shug; I might apply something I learned from the vet, or something about the business I learned at Cornell,” the serious-minded Brown said, “but the whole thing is Frankel’s operation.”

Brown, who got to learn about training world class thoroughbreds while working with the likes of the Frankel-trained Ghostzapper, Intercontinental, Empire Maker and Medaglia d’Oro, learned the value of patience from his mentor.

Maram went unraced for more than eight months following her Breeders’ Cup success due to a variety of minor physical issues. The daughter of Sahm returned to action with a victory in a minor stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 8, before suffering her first career defeat during a third-place finish in the Pebbles Stakes at Belmont. In that race, she rallied to miss victory by just a neck after starting slowly and being forced to race extremely wide.

“This year she’s done what you like to see horses do. Sometimes you see good 2-year-olds and they never progress to 3. A lot of it is physical attributes. They don’t grow; they don’t change, they get worse mentally,” Brown said. “This filly has improved in every area from 2 to 3. She grew in size; she relaxed mentally; she got stronger; these are things when you have a 2-year-old turn 3 you take for granted. You assume that they’ll do that, but they don’t.”

Maram will be taking a huge step up in class for her third start of the year, which accounts for her 12-1 odds in the morning line for the Filly & Mare Turf, which attracted defending champion Forever Together, multiple Grade-1-winner Magical Fantasy and European stakes-winner Midday.

Forever Together, the 5-2 morning-line favorite, has been upset in her last two starts, including a third-place finish in the First Lady over a soft turf course.

“To me she’s been as good as she’s ever been. Some people, some friends in the media, claim she’s lost a step, but I don’t actually think she has,” Hall of Fame trainer Jonathan Sheppard said. “She seems fine to me.”