Wise Dan on track for return in Saturday’s Bernard Baruch

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The works are done. The weights seem reasonable. The weather forecast looks fine.

It appears everything is in order for Wise Dan to return to the races in Saturday’s Grade 2, $250,000 Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga. The race would be the first for Wise Dan since he won the Grade 1 Turf Classic at Churchill Downs on May 3. Two weeks later, Wise Dan underwent colic surgery.

Wise Dan was assigned 127 pounds for the Bernard Baruch, and he will be spotting 8 to 13 pounds to prospective opponents that include Five Iron (119), Boisterous (119), Bio Pro (117), Sky Blazer (116), and North Star Boy (114).

Charlie LoPresti, the trainer of Wise Dan, said his biggest concern would be having to give significant weight to a horse that could be loose on the lead. Five Iron, trained by Brian Lynch, is a freewheeling runner who opened up a nine-length lead early and held on to win the Grade 3 Fort Marcy by a length over Summer Front. He tried to use those same tactics in the Grade 1 Manhattan and failed to stay the 1 1/4 miles. The Bernard Baruch is run at 1 1/16 miles.

“We plan on running,” LoPresti said Monday. “The horse is good. He breezed like a monster [Sunday]. We’ll enter and take a look at who’s running and lay out all our options and do what’s best for the horse and go from there.”

On Sunday, Wise Dan looked superb breezing four furlongs in 48.10 seconds over Saratoga’s main track. The best part of the breeze might have been the gallop out as Wise Dan proceeded to gallop out five furlongs in 1:00.87, six furlongs in 1:13.65, and seven furlongs in 1:27.93, looking every bit the two-time reigning Horse of the Year.

It was Wise Dan’s sixth work at Saratoga and seventh overall since the surgery.

In Sunday’s work, exercise rider Damien Rock said after he squeezed Wise Dan at the quarter pole he had to quickly take a hold of the horse “or he would have really gone fast. I definitely feel like he’s ready. He was his usual self, hard to hold him going to the pole.”