Wednesday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Scarlet’s Dream deserves another chance going longer
Saratoga | Race 3 | Post Time 2:18 p.m. (ET)
I acknowledge that Chasing Daylight (#9) looks pretty formidable at first glance, but she’s not exactly the most trustworthy win candidate. She got on a roll late last season, winning 3 of 4 starts including two victories after the claim by Rudy Rodriguez. However, her form after that was all over the place. She was basically getting eased in the stretch of a few starts through late winter, appearing to resent racing inside of horses. The good news is that she’s bounced back in her last couple of starts, running two of the fastest speed figures of her career. She also ran into a horse in razor sharp form last time when beaten by Smokin’ Hot Kitty, who has now won her last 4 dirt races in a row, including a 6 3/4 length romp here last week. The problem is that Chasing Daylight is now so obvious, resulting in a very short price, and I can’t shake the feeling that she still has a bit of unpredictability about her.
Coming up with an alternative isn’t easy and I’m not thrilled with most of the options. Malu (#7) could attract some attention of her victory here 7 days ago where she was beating up on inferior competition. However, she is claimed back by Linda Rice, who does well off the claim as well as with quick turnarounds like this. Mel’s Baby Sister (#6) ran on decently behind the talented Speightful Lily last time, but now she has to get an extra furlong.
My top pick is Scarlet’s Dream (#4). She’s another who looks inconsistent at first glance, but the outlook is a little more hopeful when you parse her races. I can throw out the turf race two back, since she just doesn’t care for that surface. She actually ran well going this distance in her second career start, earning a competitive 87 TimeformUS Speed Figure as a 2-year-old. Her subsequent dirt route in January looks disappointing, but she was wide every step of the way against one of the strongest rail biases of the entire year in New York. Since then she’s gotten back to some better efforts on the dirt, and her last race is better than it looks. She was traveling well in behind the leaders, but got put into very tight quarters approaching the stretch and could just never extricate herself from traffic to make a run until it was too late. Now she gets a significant rider upgrade from an apprentice to Tyler Gaffalione.