Breaking Lucky returns in intriguing allowance

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – While the $100,000 Summer Colony Stakes for fillies and mares may technically be the featured event on Sunday’s 10-race card at Saratoga, a $95,000 allowance race for older sprinters looks more intriguing.

The seven-horse field includes the return of the graded stakes winner Breaking Lucky, who makes his first start in 11 months and first for trainer George Weaver. The field also includes Behavioral Bias, Petrov, and Favorable Outcome.

This will be the third straight year Breaking Lucky has raced at Saratoga. In 2016, he nearly pulled off a 48-1 upset in the Grade 1 Woodward, falling a neck shy of winner Shaman Ghost as the fourth-place finisher in a four-horse photo. Last year, he was third to Gun Runner in the Grade 1 Whitney. He was trained by Reade Baker then.

While Breaking Lucky has mostly participated in graded stakes around two turns, Weaver felt this seven-furlong race was a better spot to start the horse’s 6-year-old campaign.

“He’s had such a long time off I thought running him seven-eighths off the bench is probably the right thing to do,” Weaver said. “Cutting back to a sprint, I’m not expecting him to win. I hope he makes the adjustment well enough to come running at the end. I think it’s the best way to set him up for two-turn races down the line.”

Behavioral Bias, trained by Al Stall, looks to end a string of seconds in this spot. On July 21 here, he went very fast early and finished three-quarters of a length behind No Dozing, who ran him down late. Behavioral Bias wore blinkers for the first time in that race.

“We were proud of him,” Stall said. “The blinkers made him show a little more speed than he normally had, which was the idea. He did everything but win. Maybe I’ll cut the blinkers back a smidge.”

Petrov drops back into allowance company after running sixth in the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt. In his last 12 starts, Petrov is 0 for 9 in stakes, 3 for 3 in allowance races.

Wonderful Light, Life in Shambles, and Eight Town are also in this stakes-caliber field.