Two rarities in one week: a total solar eclipse and the three Triple Crown race winners will face off in the Travers Stakes, software version 148.0.
At last we’ve reached the Travers, the Midsummer Derby, 10 furlongs that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt who the pace setter for champion three-year-old—for the golden Eclipse Award—will be.
Wuuuuuut?
This summer has been one of bucked expectations. Horses looking to match prior form—Irish War Cry, Always Dreaming, Cloud Computing—were relative no-shows in their most recent races. Girvin (#girverts) won the Haskell and Good Samaritan won the Jim Dandy. Both sleepers.
On paper this Travers is about as colorful and bettor-friendly as the Kentucky Derby itself. It has a big field (12 horses), a ton of star power, disrespected horses and bona fide longshots.
“You got horses from everywhere, all the best,” said Bill Mott, trainer of Jim Dandy winner Good Samaritan (5-1). “You got the Derby winner, the Preakness winner, the Belmont; you’ve got everybody. It shaped up to be a really good field.”
The forecast calls for a 10 percent chance of rain and a high of 74 degrees and 53 percent humidity. How did that happen? Sounds like Maui, not Saratoga Springs. Despite the pristine weather conditions on the ol’ 5-day forecast, the real X-factor will be the track. Not if it rains and becomes muddy, but whether or not the horses will be wading through quicksand or running over the Audubon.
The quotes that emerged from the Travers post draw were, as expected, a bit vanilla, as they usually are, though Todd Pletcher of the Pletcher Industrial Complex (PIC), shed some light on something that’s not often talked about: how tiring the track was on Jim Dandy Day.
His Kentucky Derby winner, Always Dreaming, faded like nobody’s business. The winning time was 1:50 and change and for horses of this caliber, that time is like a winter stomp at Turfway Park.
“Just how slow the track was the first week of the meet and any times horses of that quality run 1:51-and-change,” Pletcher said, “it indicates the track is pretty demanding. I think since then, it’s tightened up. They’ve run the fastest mile-and-an-eighth they have so far at the meet [Monday], so I’m anticipating a different track on Saturday.”
The track surface is like a fine, nuanced pinot noir: layers, baby. The team behind the harrowing and the conditioning of the surface always has a challenge of dialing in those layers and balance so the track is true and fair.
Chad Brown, trainer of Cloud Computing (8-1!), echoed Pletcher’s sentiment about the track.
“The track was very demanding [on Jim Dandy day],” he said. “This horse has never let us down in a workout or a race except that one day. [He was] very tired and just didn’t come out of that race like we’ve normally seen. Since the race I’ve thought about the Travers a little bit, he’s come back and worked great twice going to the [main] track and it’s tightened up nicely and he’s ready to run his race.”
This issue with the track throws a black fly into the handicapping chardonnay. Did Good Samaritan, a horse who had run on grass and debuted on dirt in the Jim Dandy, benefit from the taxing track? Was he merely the last horse standing while the quote-unquote better horses fatigued over the loamy goings?
Same goes for Guiseppe the Great, the horse trained by Hall of Famer Nick Zito. GtG finished second behind Good Samaritan in the Jim Dandy.
“[He] couldn’t have had a better week—and couldn’t have had a better week last week—so, that’s what counts,” Zito said. “He’s been doing very, very well since, I have to knock wood. He’s very consistent. We saw what he could do in a race called the Jim Dandy, so that’s pretty good.”
And a handicapping edge? Always listen to horsemen. Through sheer repetition and deep immersion, they see things we don’t and likely never will. Zito appears to be high on one horse and that horse isn’t even his.
“It’s funny that nobody talks about Good Samaritan. He was impressive,” said Zito.
We can all agree the time wasn’t a head-turner (1:50.69), but there’s an explanation for that, according to Pletcher and Brown. But when you watch Good Samaritan swing 4,000 wide (slight exaj) turning for home and drawing away from those goobers, you soon realize that the horse nobody’s talking about is suddenly the horse to beat.
He has no glamour, no ritz. He’s the embodiment of his trainer, Mott, the silent assassin (can we agree that an assassin who isn’t silent, would sorta be the worst? But also the makings of a great Judd Apatow movie? Anyway…), who is just fine sitting back in his box unassuming going about his biz and rakin’ in stakes.
Come Saturday, Mott will block out the sun.
Brendan O’Meara is an award-winning freelance writer and author of Six Weeks in Saratoga. He hosts The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Say hello on Twitter @BrendanOMeara.
