Annals of Time must prove himself in Sword Dancer

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – On July 24 at Saratoga Race Course, Annals of Time, a six-year-old horse trained by Chad Brown starting for the second time after a two-year layoff, made a six-wide move in a third-level turf allowance to win by 4 1/2 lengths while running the last three-sixteenths of a mile in 17 seconds.

That eye-popping performance was enough to make him the 5-2 morning-line favorite in Saturday’s Grade 1 Sword Dancer, despite some veteran runners in the field who have been knocking around in the graded stakes ranks for the past two years – namely Channel Maker and Sadler’s Joy, who combined have started in 33 straight graded stakes races going into the Sword Dancer.

The $850,000 Sword Dancer is part of Saturday’s blockbuster Saratoga card, going off as the 10th race, directly preceding the Travers Stakes. As a 1 1/2-mile race that attracts the best of the East Coast’s turf runners, it will set the stage for the run-up to the $4 million Breeders’ Cup Turf on Nov. 2. The winner of the Sword Dancer will get an all-expenses paid berth in the Turf.

For Annals of Time, the Sword Dancer will be an opportunity to re-enter the graded stakes ranks. The Temple City horse made waves as a 3-year-old in 2016, capping his season with a December win in the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby at 1 1/8-miles on the Del Mar turf. But a soft-tissue injury sent him to the sidelines for the next nine months.

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He came back for one race the next September, an allowance at Saratoga that he won with ease as the 4-5 favorite, but any chance at a fall campaign was dashed when troubles cropped up again. He was sent back to Florida to rebab with Nick de Meric, who had picked out the horse as a yearling for owners Klaravich Stables and William Lawrence.

Twenty months of rehab, to be accurate.

“Thankfully, with a lot of hard work from our team, he’s come back in fine shape,” Brown said. “Hopefully he can have an uninterrupted campaign this time.”

The allowance win on July 24 was the farthest Annals of Time has ever run, but the horse is a closer, so Brown said he’s willing to take the chance that Annals of Time can get the 1 1/2-mile distance of the Sword Dancer. But he also expressed surprise that the horse had been made the favorite in the race, given the questions surrounding the layoff and the stretch-out.

Oh, did we mention the rabbit?

Brown has also entered Proven Reserves, a 4-year-old colt owned by Klaravich who has never run on the turf and is eligible for a second-level allowance. Proven Reserves drew the rail.

“He’ll set the pace,” Brown said.

That’s discouraging news to trainer Bill Mott, who brings Channel Maker into the Sword Dancer after a fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Bowling Green at Saratoga on July 27 in which the 5-year-old gelding was beaten three-quarters of a length for first place. Among the legitimate turf horses entered in the race, Channel Maker was the best bet to try to set a soft pace in the race, but Proven Reserve is almost guaranteed to give everyone else in the race something to run at.

“It would be great if there was no pace, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” Mott said. “He’ll just have to work out a trip that’s uncomplicated.”

Brown has another interesting horse in the race, Ya Primo, who spent the first half of this year blowing the doors off his competition in Chile. Ya Primo finished second in the Bowling Green in his first start in the U.S., and Brown said he had been pointing to the Sword Dancer since the horse arrived in his barn in Florida in the winter.

“I saw [the Bowling Green] as training,” Brown said. “He’ll move forward.”

Also notable in the Sword Dancer field are Bowling Green winner Channel Cat, trained by the always dangerous Todd Pletcher; Sadler’s Joy, who has not won since nine starts ago, in the 2018 Mac Diarmida, but has run in 17 straight graded stakes races; and Pillar Mountain, another Pletcher trainee who is coming into the Sword Dancer on a two-race win streak in turf allowances. Noble Thought and Tiz Morning round out the field.