Unbeaten By Your Side a forgotten horse as Hopeful Stakes nears

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – By Your Side won the Grade 3 Sanford Stakes by three lengths as the favorite here on July 13. When he runs back in Monday’s Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes, By Your Side could be one of the longer prices in the seven-horse field.

A lot of intriguing 2-year-olds have won at Saratoga since By Your Side’s victory, and many of them will show up in the Hopeful, the closing-day feature at Saratoga.

Green Light Go, the dominant winner of the Grade 2 Saratoga Special, and the trio of Basin, Gozilla and Shoplifted – all maiden winners from the barn of Steve Asmussen – are part of the Hopeful field. D. Wayne Lukas, an eight-time Hopeful winner, has entered American Butterfly. Inside Risk, a horse claimed for $50,000 by Tom Morley out of a win here on Aug. 1, completes the field.

By Your Side’s trainer, Eddie Kenneally, acknowledges the success of Green Light Go and the Asmussen trio, but he’s quite content with his horse coming into the Hopeful.

“It doesn’t really matter who gets the limelight beforehand, it’s who gets it after the race is run,” Kenneally said. “We’ve got plenty of respect for those horses that you mentioned and they may be more on people’s minds because they’ve run recently, but our horse hasn’t done anything wrong and hopefully he’ll improve where he can be competitive with those horses.”

By Your Side beat Basin by a nose in a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race at Churchill on June 14. In the Sanford, By Your Side was dueling on the lead until the sixteenth pole before drawing off to win handily under Irad Ortiz Jr.

“He was full of run at the wire and kept running on past the wire,” Kenneally said. “Irad was pretty impressed with how he galloped out in the Sanford. We’re hoping that will hold true when we run him at seven-eighths on Monday. Irad has since breezed the horse and has been very complimentary of his demeanor and how he thinks the longer races will suit him better because of his relaxed style and big closing kick.”

The Hopeful field, from the rail out, is: Shoplifted, American Butterfly, Green Light Go, Gozilla, By Your Side, Inside Risk, and Basin.