Borracho using allowance as prep for Jerkens

After Borracho finished a strong third in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens last month at Belmont Park, beaten a length by Hog Creek Hustle, the prevailing thinking was that trainer Rusty Arnold would wheel his improving 3-year-old back in the Grade 1 Amsterdam a week from Sunday. Instead, Arnold opted to drop Borracho back into the allowance ranks on Sunday's card at Saratoga, where he’ll take on older horses for the first time in his career.

“I want to run him in the Allen Jerkens,” Arnold said Thursday morning, referring to the Grade 1 dash for 3-year-olds on Aug. 24. “That was our main goal when we came here. The Amsterdam is at 6 1/2 furlongs, which is a little short for him. I didn’t think it would hurt us to go into the allowance race, which is at seven furlongs, and it also gives us an extra week to get to the race we’re really planning on.”

:: Get PPs, Clocker Reports, picks, and more from DRF's Saratoga/Del Mar One-Stop Shop

Arnold’s main concern is how much Borracho’s 45.84-second half-mile work on Sunday may have taken out of him.

“The whole work got messed up right from the start and I almost didn’t enter him because of it,” said Arnold. “We had him over at Oklahoma to work when a horse broke down just before he was ready to go. It looked like it was going to take a good half-hour before the track would be clear, so we brought him over to the main track and he just got keyed up and was on ‘go’ by the time we got him there. He seems to have come out of it okay. I just hope the work doesn’t have him charged up too much during the early part of the race on Saturday.”