Sunday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Aviso's prior trips suggest she deserves another chance on turf
Saratoga | Race 6 | Post Time 4:02 p.m. (ET)
A few of the fillies who may take money in this allowance are getting a serious class test coming out of maiden wins against weaker company. That includes Competitive Threat (#1) and Leslie's Star (#4). Competitive Threat dropped in for a tag for the first time in her most recent start at Aqueduct, and the class relief was enough to put her in the winner's circle. Yet she wasn't the most convincing winner, and she'll have to run better than that 89 TimeformUS Speed Figure to beat this field. Leslie's Star has a similar profile and might have defeated an even weaker field. It will also be hard for even Irad Ortiz Jr. to work out a better trip than Junior Alvarado orchestrated for her last time.
I'm more interested in horses coming from different directions. Downtown Channel (#3) has a right to get back on track as she returns from a layoff, since she achieved her only victory when returning from a similar freshening at Saratoga last year. She was inconsistent at the end of the season, but she got a pretty wide trip when she last competed in October. She makes her first start with Lasix for this return.
I also think there are two intriguing Kentucky shippers in the field. One of those is Life Advice (#7), whose 99 TimeformUS Speed Figure from April makes her one of the fastest fillies in this field. She regressed last time, but she never settled when chasing a fast pace that fell apart. Now she's dropping back down to a slightly softer level, and the TimeformUS Pace Projector is predicting that she will be the main speed.
My top pick is the other Churchill shipper, Aviso (#2). She's made all of her recent starts on dirt, and she's actually exiting the best performance of her career. However, a close examination of her early turf attempts suggests that she deserves another chance on this surface. She would have been competitive in that Jan. 4 turf race against a pretty strong maiden field, but she lost position on the far turn and then was ridden right into traffic inside the eighth pole, steadying badly at the end. In her next and most recent turf start in February, she was ridden conservatively to the quarter pole and then got steadied and basically eased when swerving to avoid a fallen rider. She's bred to be best on turf, being a half-sister to solid turf sprinter Independenceavenue and out of a dam who was a Group 1 turf winner in Brazil.