Everything goes perfectly for Tell Your Daddy in Bernard Baruch victory

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Trainer Tom Morley and jockey John Velazquez had already decided they were going to put Tell Your Daddy on the lead in Monday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga before it was announced that the other potential pace horse, En Wye Cee, was scratched.

That defection just made their plan easier to execute.

Able to make the lead rather comfortably under Velazquez, Tell Your Daddy had a clear lead through easy fractions of 24.92 seconds for the quarter, 50.75 for the half and 1:15.54 for six furlongs, Tell Your Daddy had enough left in reserve to hold off a late run from No Word and win the 1 1/16-mile Bernard Baruch by a half-length.

No Word, who tried to rally along the inside under Manny Franco, finished second by a length over 3-5 favorite L’Imperator. Dreams of Tomorrow was last.

The complexion of the race changed significantly when En Wye Cee, the 2-1 morning-line favorite, was scratched due to yielding turf made so after .15 of an inch of rain fell. Tom Moore, owner of En Wye Cee, noted that his horse got hurt running over yielding turf at Belmont last October.

Tell Your Daddy, claimed for $40,000 by Morley for Jason Provenzano’s Flying P Stable in January at Fair Grounds, was coming off a second-place finish to front-running Flavius in the Lure Stakes here on Aug. 7. Morley said Velazquez came off the horse and told him “I’d love to see what he could do on the front end in one of these races.

“But En Wye Cee coming out probably helped our cause as well. It’s a yielding turf course, hard to close.”

Velazquez said En Wye Cee’s defection “made it a lot easier that I didn’t have to hustle him too hard to go to the first turn.”

Tell Your Daddy was timed in 1:44.61 and returned $7.90 as the second choice.