SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – As successful as the four-day Belmont Stakes Racing Festival was when it was held here last month, it couldn’t completely erase the bad memories of the 2023 Saratoga summer meet.
As racing is set to commence Thursday on the 40-day Saratoga season, the New York Racing Association hopes to rebound from last year’s meet lowlighted by a large number of equine fatalities and rainy weather that led to a 9 percent decline in business from the previous year.
The summer meets at Saratoga and Del Mar are known for unveiling promising 2-year-olds, and for graded stakes that will begin sorting out the juvenile divisions. With rich maiden races and statebred incentives, the summer seasons also are crucial for freshman sires in New York and California, respectively, to begin putting their best foot forward.
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Perfect Lady Bee has a blend of speed and stamina in her quality pedigree and will debut in Thursday’s fourth race at Woodbine, a 6 1/2-furlong maiden special for 3-year-old fillies on the main turf.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Trainer Danny Gargan hopes to kick off the summer Saratoga meet like he ended the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival here last month.
Gargan, who won the June 8 Belmont Stakes at Saratoga with longshot Dornoch, on Thursday sends out Complexion in the $175,000 Schuylerville Stakes, the featured event on the 11-race opening-day card that ushers in the 40-day meet. The Schuylerville, for 2-year-old fillies at six furlongs on the main track, goes as race 10 on an 11-race card that begins at 1:10 p.m.
The job trainer Jena Antonucci did in developing Arcangelo into the 3-year-old champion male of 2023 has set the table for potentially more success for her in the future.
While Antonucci believes the effect on her stable from Arcangelo winning the Belmont Stakes and Travers will be more apparent next year, she is back at Saratoga this summer with a large number of 2-year-olds, many of whom are likely to be seen during the 40-day meet that begins Thursday.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Headline Numbers, a 3-year-old daughter of Gun Runner, made an eye-catching debut Thursday at Aqueduct, winning a one-mile maiden race by 11 3/4 lengths, earning an 85 Beyer Speed Figure.
Trained by Chad Brown for Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables, Headline Numbers had shown three breezes last year before going off the work tab. She spent most of the winter and the early spring working at Fair Hill, a training center in Maryland, before shipping to Saratoga in May.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – You only get one chance to make a good first impression and trainer John Terranova made one for a new client Thursday, when he sent out the 2-year-old filly Italian Soiree to a 5 1/2-length debut win Thursday at Aqueduct.
Italian Soiree, a daughter of Uncle Mo who brought $600,000 at the OBS March sales, is owned in part by Hal Mintz, a hedge-fund manager who races under the name Hit the Bid Stables. Morplay Racing and Randal Hartley also own Italian Soiree.
Owner Isabelle de Tomaso has four chances Sunday at Monmouth Park to win a race named after her most famous horse, but none of them is He’spuregold, who can win the $85,000 Irish War Cry Handicap for the fourth year in a row.
He’spuregold, fresh off a maiden win, won his first Irish War Cry as a 3-year-old in 2021. A year later, he was an easy repeat winner, his 90 Beyer Speed Figure a career best at the time, and last July, as the 124-pound highweight, He’spuregold was up by three-quarters of a length over There Are No Words, who takes another shot at He’spuregold on Sunday.
Multiple Grade 1-winning millionaire War Like Goddess heads a competitive edition of the Grade 3, $250,000 Robert G. Dick Memorial Stakes for fillies and mares racing 1 3/8 miles on turf at Delaware Park.
The Robert G. Dick is one of four stakes on the Sunday program.
A 7-year-old mare by English Channel, War Like Goddess has won 11 of 19 starts for earnings of $2,625,184. She beat males in the last two editions of the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic in New York.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainers Chad Brown and Christophe Clement appear to have the protagonists in each of the two $125,000 New York-bred turf stakes scheduled for Sunday’s closing-day program at Aqueduct.
In the Hudson Valley, for males at one mile, Brown sends out the rising statebred star Spirit of St Louis against Clement’s nine-time stakes winner City Man. In the Port Washington, for females at 1 1/16 miles, Clement may have the upper hand when he runs Silver Skillet against the Brown-trained Marvelous Maude.
