Rescheduled John Morrissey picks up a seventh entrant

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Better late than never. That about sums up Sunday’s $100,000 John Morrissey Stakes, which was postponed 10 days after the second half of the July 25 program was canceled due to adverse track conditions.

Despite being rescheduled and redrawn, the field for the 6 1/2-furlong dash for 3-year-old New York-breds remained pretty much intact with Vincento, benefitting from the added time, the only addition to the original six-horse lineup.

The John Morrissey brings back the second, third, and fourth-place finishers – Eye Love Lulu, Celtic Chaos, and Gold for the King, respectively – from the 2018 edition won by the now retired Weekend Hideaway. The field also includes the lightly raced but very talented Build to Suit, who makes just his second start since October 2017 and first since drawing off to an easy entry-level allowance win against open company in late January for which he received a 101 Beyer Speed Figure.

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“He had a hoof problem, and it just took a while to come around, but he’s training really well,” trainer Chad Brown said. “It looks like a pretty evenly matched field, but he’s off a layoff now, and there are some horses in there who have been training more frequently. That’s the big challenge, I think.”

Vincento brings a two-race win streak into the John Morrissey. The 8-year-old has been traded a couple of times at the claim box over the past six months between his current trainer Linda Rice and former mentor Rudy Rodriguez.

Vincento posted a game wire-to-wire triumph going 1 1/8 miles when back with Rice again on July 11 to swell his earnings to more than $141,000 in 2019. The week-and-a-half postponement of this race has given him enough time to recuperate from the effort to facilitate his return to stakes company Sunday for the first time in more than three years.