SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Owner John Stewart’s Resolute Racing is the presenting sponsor of Friday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Just a Game Stakes at Saratoga. There’s a very good chance he could be presenting the trophy to himself.
In Excellent Truth and A Lilac Rolla, Stewart has two significant players in this field of 11 fillies and mares scheduled to run a mile over Saratoga’s inner turf course.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – The eighth-year trainer Cherie DeVaux never has won a graded stakes at Saratoga. She has come close, with 13 of 22 entrants finishing second or third. You’d think DeVaux’s never saddled a Saratoga graded stakes runner with a better chance than She Feels Pretty has in the $750,000 New York on Friday – except She Feels Pretty finished second as an odds-on favorite here last summer in the Lake Placid.
Not just the betting public but DeVaux herself felt She Feels Pretty never should have lost, and the defeat spurred DeVaux to try the filly in blinkers.
Bridle a Butterfly seems to have found his niche as a late-running turf sprinter. Coming off a 9-1 upset stakes win at Churchill Downs, the gelding figures to be much shorter odds against a stakes-quality field Friday in a $141,000 turf-sprint allowance for 3-year-olds.
Bridle a Butterfly, a Glen Hill Farm homebred by Country House, made four starts last year for trainer Bethany Baumgardner, with his lone win coming in his debut at five furlongs on the turf. In stakes efforts as a juvenile, he ran relatively evenly.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – It will be the speed of Irish Maxima against the class of both Ways and Means and Scylla when the trio tops a field of seven older fillies and mares going seven furlongs Friday at Saratoga in the $300,000 Bed o’ Roses Stakes. The lineup also includes recent Grade 2 winner Jody’s Pride.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Good Cheer is perfect and, to listen to her trainer Brad Cox tell it, seemingly only getting better.
Undefeated in seven starts after her decisive victory over 12 opponents in the Kentucky Oaks five weeks ago at Churchill Downs, Good Cheer looks to remain unbeaten when she faces five rivals in Friday’s Grade 1, $500,000 Acorn Stakes at Saratoga. The Acorn, like the Kentucky Oaks, is run at 1 1/8 miles around two turns.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Twice last summer at Saratoga, trainer Chad Brown took down champion mare Idiomatic. Randomized upset her in the Ogden Phipps and Raging Sea bested her in the Personal Ensign, Idiomatic an odds-on favorite both races. Idiomatic’s retired, and on Friday, in the Grade 1, $500,000 Phipps, Brown’s mares turn from hunters into the hunted.
Morning-line maker David Aragona installed Raging Sea as the 5-2 Phipps favorite and has Randomized the 9-2 fourth choice, though one could imagine her dropping lower.
One June 7, 2020, the Triple Crown series had not yet begun due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authentic had finished second in his first Grade 1 start, the Santa Anita Derby. Fate dictated that his emergence on the Triple Crown scene would come late, and it worked out for him. Authentic won the Haskell Invitational in July and the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby – the second leg of the Triple Crown that year following the June 20 Belmont Stakes – before finishing second in the Preakness Stakes and winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic to earn Horse of the Year honors.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Friday’s Grade 2, $250,000 Belmont Gold Cup is a two-mile marathon on Saratoga’s inner turf course. It may be about as short as a few in this field want to go.
Flatten the Curve, Limited Liability, and Lord Flintshire have all won races beyond two miles – the latter doing so over hurdles and now coming back to the flat.
