Weekend Warrior for Saturday, Aug. 26: Picks for Travers, Forego, Jerkens Memorial

There are many big days at Saratoga, but Travers Day is the biggest of them all. And Saturday’s Travers card not only features the Grade 1, $1.25 million centerpiece of the Saratoga meet but also five other Grade 1 events and one Grade 2 race for a total of $3.7 million.

At Del Mar, the main attraction is the Grade 2, $200,000 Pat O’Brien, which lured the streaking Danzing Candy.

Travers Stakes

Perhaps the best way to approach this wide-open Travers is to decide what to do with the entrants with the bigger reputations, including the winners of the three Triple Crown events. I’ve decided that I’m playing against them. All of them.

Kentucky Derby winner Always Dreaming and Preakness winner Cloud Computing were not good in the Jim Dandy Stakes earlier in the Saratoga meet. They both tired, and the fact that they were involved in a three-way photo for minor pieces of the purse with Pavel, whose only prior start was a maiden sprint win, is not to their credit. Moreover, Always Dreaming ran poorly in the Preakness, a race Cloud Computing won thanks to an ideal setup.

Tapwrit won the Belmont Stakes, which lacked the Derby and Preakness winners, and subsequent events have done little to refute the belief that his Belmont was a weak one. Seven of the 10 horses Tapwrit beat in the Belmont have run since then, and six lost, including runner-up Irish War Cry and third-place finisher Patch. So far, the only Belmont also-ran who came back to win was Twisted Tom, and he was a desperate winner of the New York Derby over New York-breds at Finger Lakes.

Girvin and McCraken finished one-two in the Haskell, and I don’t want them either. The Haskell was a slow race with a winning Beyer Speed Figure of only 95, and as iffy as many of these Travers entrants are, Girvin and McCraken still must run faster to contend Saturday.

Good Samaritan was the upset winner of the Jim Dandy in his first race on dirt, and I like him to win right back. Good Samaritan has been one of the best of his generation on turf. He was arguably best when third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last fall and was severely compromised by extremely slow paces when he picked up minor awards in the Pennine Ridge and Belmont Derby in his two starts prior to the Jim Dandy.

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Good Samaritan’s connections had long wanted to try him on dirt, where, among other factors, he had a better chance to get a decent pace to set up his late kick. But when Good Samaritan finally saw dirt in the Jim Dandy, the early pace he got, while not as plodding as what he encountered on turf, was entirely unremarkable. Nevertheless, Good Samaritan still produced an explosive late kick to score in dominating fashion, and if anything, he should be even more effective while stretching back out to the 10 furlongs of the Travers.

Forego Stakes

Drefong, last year’s champion male sprinter, and Mind Your Biscuits, a strong winner of the Belmont Sprint Championship in his first start since winning the Dubai Golden Shaheen, come into this as the top-ranked sprinters in the country. Both were stakes winners at Saratoga last summer, and they will take a lot of beating Saturday.

That said, I’m going with Divining Rod. He ran by far the best race of his career two starts back when a narrowly beaten second in the Cigar Mile to Connect, who had just beaten Gun Runner in the Pennsylvania Derby and was most impressive in winning the Westchester this year in what turned out to be his career finale.

Divining Rod recently returned to action at Laurel with a blowout score that sets him up nicely for this, and he is trained by Arnaud Delacour, who knows what’s needed to win the Forego. Delacour won this race last year with A. P. Indian.

H. Allen Jerkens Memorial

I noted in my Travers analysis that the Haskell was a slow race. But one horse from the Haskell whom I’m willing to give a pass to is Practical Joke, my pick in this spot.

Practical Joke was a narrowly beaten third in the Haskell, but I still believe he is far more effective in shorter one-turn races like this one, as evidenced by his much-the-best win in the Dwyer two starts back.