One last swing at pick four riches as the Santa Anita meet closes and a chance for those licking their wounds from all the Breeders’ Cup activity to get something back.
In potential lead-ins to the Remsen and Demoiselle, 2-year-olds go one mile in a pair of $250,000 stakes on Sunday at Aqueduct: The Grade 2 Nashua is race 3; the Grade 3 Tempted for fillies is race 6.
The strategy for Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Ultra Pick Six with a $2.5 million-guaranteed pool is pretty simple: Survive and advance through the first four legs, and get to a pair of imposing favorites at the end – Toronado (#5) in the Mile, and Shared Belief (#6) in the Classic.
You can look at the Turf Sprint two ways: a chance to reap profits sown by chaos, or a serious drag on a pick four ticket with a reasonable budget. I’ve got eight Turf Sprint horses on this ticket – 3 As, 3 Bs, 2 Cs – and still that doesn’t feel like enough.
For those licking their wounds after a busy two days of Breeders’ Cup involvement, the good news is the sun comes up the next day, and there likely are some wagering opportunities to be found. That may be the case here.
The quick turnaround by smashing recent winner Doubledown Again in race 8 at Aqueduct may give you a linchpin for the day’s closing pick three, and bulky fields for the turf in races 7 and 9 give you a chance to find a price.
Three-year-old males in New York get their last graded stakes shot against their own age group in the Grade 3 Discovery Handicap (race 8), in which Bay of Plenty and Three Alarm Fire are expected to vie for favoritism going once around the main track at 1 1/8 miles.
The Display Stakes kicks off the early pick four, which has a guaranteed pool of $100,000, Saturday at Woodbine.
I think four horses can win the $3 million Breeders’ Cup Turf.
With American Pharoah out of the Juvenile, the focus of the race shifts toward the East Coast and specifically to the barn of trainer Todd Pletcher, who sends out two top contenders in Daredevil and Carpe Diem.
