SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Renegade didn’t generate the kind of buzz a talented Todd Pletcher-trained 2-year-old typically does when he debuted at Saratoga last August. Certainly, nobody was talking about him after he got beat 18 1/4 lengths by It’s Our Time, who ran a freaky kind of race winning by 17 3/4 lengths.

Pletcher wasn’t discouraged. He had told owner Mike Repole going into the race there was something about this son of Into Mischief that he liked and he wasn’t dismayed afterward.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – In a career that will soon eclipse 6,000 wins, it could be hard to single out an individual highlight. For Todd Pletcher, not so much.

It is 19 years since the filly Rags to Riches overcame a stumble at the start and outfinished Preakness winner Curlin, a subsequent two-time Horse of the Year, with a 23.83-second final quarter-mile that propelled her to win the 2007 Belmont Stakes by a head. It was the first win in a Triple Crown race for Pletcher, who has since won three more Belmonts and two Kentucky Derbies.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Jose Ortiz was the leading rider on the New York Racing Association circuit three times during the 13 years he was based here and that didn’t include 2017, the year he won the Eclipse Award as North America’s champion jockey.

Two years ago, Ortiz made the move to Kentucky – and in the winter Louisiana – and things are only getting better.

A bay colt by Curlin and out of the Bernardini mare Carrumba came into this world on Feb. 7, 2023, foaled at famed Claiborne Farm, where he spent the first 18 months of his existence parading through paddocks, frolicking in fields. Late in the summer of 2024, the bucolic chapter of this colt’s life came to an end. Off to Williston, Fla., to be broken at Eisaman Equine.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Commandment seems to be the forgotten horse of this year’s Triple Crown heading into Saturday’s $2 million Belmont Stakes at Saratoga.

Despite being a multiple graded stakes winner and one of just three Grade 1 winners in the field, there doesn’t seem to be much buzz surrounding Commandment, who finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby, beaten 5 1/2 lengths by Golden Tempo.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Chad Brown is a numbers guy. But he’s also a realist. He knows that just because he has a third of the field entered in Saturday’s $2 million Belmont Stakes at Saratoga doesn’t mean he’s going to be successful.

“The math checks out that I have a better chance to win, but that’s about it,” Brown, who is still seeking his first Belmont win, said Monday morning at Saratoga. “I don’t know if I have the right three.”