The whole telecast crew was there. Maggie Wolfendale and Acacia Courtney, girls in their summer dresses. Gary Stevens plopped on his couch with a throw pillow stitched with the names of his significant winners, Ox Box, Point Given, Silver Charm, etc.
Greg Wolf, Richard Migliore, Jonathon Kinchen, Laffit Pincay III, Tom Amoss and Andy Serling, who I even found less obnoxious than usual. He was almost entertaining. The telecast switch to the regular Fox network at 5:00 was marred by a near 15 minute outage as they failed to bring a trackside picture starting at 5:00. I hustled to my XpressBets account with track video and audio to catch the running of the 9th race, the G3, 1½ mile Waya Stakes on the turf, won by my selection My Sister Nat, ridden by Jose Ortiz and trained by Chad Brown.
Chad might not be the leading trainer at this point, but it's hard to keep him off the board when it comes to turf. The $6.90 payoff as the second choice was a gift, considering how easily she won.
My attack on the 12-race card didn't get off to a roaring start. In fact, it was a complete dud, not hitting anything in the first four races. I wisely passed the next two, Maiden Special Weight races with unraced entrants.
Unraced horses are the greatest unknown at the races. Even with some detailed commentary and statistics about their pedigrees and quality of workouts, they are the original crap shoot. Spot something that no one else is onto, and an unraced winner can pay a nice price. Pile on with everyone else who's been fed the optimism, and you're usually faced with a prohibitive favorite. It's only good when you pick a winner who might beat the favorite.
The 7th race was the Grade 1 Ballerina, a 7 furlong dirt race for fillies and mares. There aren't many Grade 1 7 furlong races anywhere, and this one was enhanced by a "win-and-you're-in" prize to the Breeders' Cup, with the winner guaranteed entry, plus some expenses, for the filly and mare sprint at 7f at Keeneland later this year.
All week Greg Wolf has been talking to Tom Amoss about his Serengeti Empress entered in the Ballerina. Amoss of course is a competent trainer, usually on the Oak Lawn Park, Fair Grounds circuit who is hitting winners at a very acceptable 21%.
Serengeti won the Kentucky Oaks the day before the Derby at Churchill in 2019. They love to show the video of someone giving Amoss a congratulatory slap on the back—perhaps a bit too hard—and seeing Amoss falling into his wife and sending both of them to the floor. Win a race like the Oaks and any celebration is a good welcome.
Serengeti is a quality 4-year-old filly who has already banked $1.7 million in earnings. Her last two races at a mile and a sixteenth however were abysmal. A mile and a sixteenth is the famous angle to set up a 7f race.
Seven furlongs to me might jut be the hardest race to win and the most fun to handicap. It is around one turn, is a sprint/near-route race, and requires great stamina to pull off the win from the front end. The winning times on the NYRA circuit can be in the 1:20, 1:21 range. They're moving.
I've always likened the 7f races to the 600 yard indoor track race, when there was indoor track in NYC at the Garden. And there was always one runner, Martin McGrady who was considered the "Chairman of the Boards" who had just the right mixture of speed and stamina to consistently win those races. The guy was a joy to watch run. If there were Beyer Speed Ratings for track athletes, his would have always been over 100.
Serengeti's principle opposition was Bellafina, an equally good four-year-old filly who Serengeti has beaten in the past. Despite this, Bellafina was favored, and Serengeti was second choice, despite the lousy last two races.
For myself, I went with Letruska, who had won her first six races in Mexico City, and continued to win once coming to the States. She had top Beyer numbers and figured to go for the lead. She was intriguing at 5-1.
But this was Serengeti's and Tom Amoss's day. Serengeti didn't break well, but still garnered the lead, and set fractions that usually cause a horse to back up and not be around at the finish: :213/5, an ungodly :433/5 and a decent 1:081/5, finishing in 1:213/5., while being pressured by Letruska, who folded.
There aren't many :43 halves run that see the same horse first at the wire, but today was Serengeti's day. In fact, there was one horse, Pure Sensation, in the next race, the G3 Troy at 5½f on the turf who had run in the same Troy race last year who sped through the quarter in :204/5 with a :43 half before folding. In a prior optional claimer at Gulfstream on April 12, 2019 Pure Sensation clocked a :424/5 on the turf, and won the 5f race in :543/5. They generally run faster on turf than dirt, but I can't remember ever seeing fractions like that in a past performance. Purse Sensation had nothing yesterday, and finished last in this year's Troy.
I must have popped out of a Trojan horse in the Troy, because it was there my day was made. I conquered.
Due to the disqualification of the winner Imprimis for interfering with Shekky Shebaz who finished third, my exacta of American Sailor and Shekky Shebaz moved up from 2-3 to 1-2. Imprimis was placed third, behind the horse he bothered.
Imprimis was ridden by Jose Ortiz, and the horse he bothered was ridden by Irad Ortiz, Jr., his brother. Whether this means Jose is not coming over for Thanksgiving, only the Ortiz brothers will know. In addition to the effect of the DQ giving me the exacta, my win bet on American Sailor was paid off, since American Sailor was moved up to first from second. I collected handsomely, my first cashed raced, and a portent of better things. The new result made up for last week's DQ, which didn't go my way. A win is a win, and you go with it, no matter how it happened.
The 9th race went my way, not the 10th, and then we had The Travers and Tiz the Law, who fought the law and The Law won. Big time.
I had already thought there might not be a full field of 20 in the Kentucky Derby no matter who has accumulated points. Because of the reshuffled schedule, Tiz the Law has shown he can do a 1 ¼. before the Derby, scheduled for the first Saturday in September, with the Preakness following in October.
Bob Baffert was so impressed with Tiz the Law and his burying the field along with Bob's Uncle Chuck, that he doesn't feel they're going to need the auxiliary gate in the Derby. With no parties and hats to wear, the Derby won't be the social, drinking whirl it usually is.
Barclay Tagg, the trainer of Tiz the Law and the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide in 2003, won the first race yesterday, his first at the meet, with a layoff horse Doswell, last seen at the races on September 2, 2019. Up till then, Boswell had raced four times, finishing second the first three times, then finishing fourth after stumbling, each time going off at the favorite, twice odds on.
Whatever portent there was for Tagg winning the first race, when it happened I remember Nick Zito winning the first race when his Birdstone was going to later run on the Belmont Stakes card, upsetting Smarty Jones's Triple Crown bid. And Birdstone later won The Travers that year.
I distinctly remember this because that Saturday was my oldest daughter's wedding, and I was killing time before the big event, handicapping the card. A 4 o'clock wedding and an early first race post on Belmont Day lets you cram in lots of things. Hey, I only got to hear the call of the race on the car radio in the parking lot of the reception place, the Snuff Mill in the Bronx Botanical Gardens, because the stupid place had no television. Durkin's call was good enough. (I didn't have Birdstone, either. But it was a great wedding.)
A healthy Doswell again went off as the favorite, and romped home. I think I remember hearing it commented that the horse had throat surgery between his last 2019 start and now. Tagg of course is once again in the spotlight as the trainer for Sackatoga Stable who raced Funny Cide and who now race Tiz the Law.
Sackatoga is a partnership of upstate horse players who first got together with Funny Cide and arrived at the races in a school bus. They have proved to be a legacy bunch who still boast a few of the original partners. Jack Knowlton is the guiding domo, then and now. The stable only bids on New York breds. Funny Cide was the first New York bred to win a Kentucky Derby.
The name Tiz the Law is a derivative of its sire Constitution, out of a Tiznow mare Tizfiz. Tiznow provides the distance breeding. The Saratoga natives have so taken to Tiz the Law that they have added signs beneath their STOP signs that say TIZ THE LAW. The town has removed the signs, but I bet they might be going back up.
John Imbriale's call of yesterday's race ended with the exclamation, "here he is, Saratoga's hometown hero..." as Tiz cantered home ahead by 5½ length in the fourth fastest Travers ever, in 2:00.95.
And Tiz the Law just might not stop either.
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