Venue for March 21 - Aqueduct

[JolyB]

Most of the time, our contest trail tries to include the top stakes races, and we follow the "blue bloods" of the thoroughbred world. For our contest on Saturday, we will have a change of pace and instead pay honor to the blue collar horses by playing the New York Claiming Championships at Aqueduct.

Aqueduct has seen the success of the Claiming Crown series elsewhere, so has inaugurated a series of 10 stakes races worth a total of $710,000, with each race open only to horses that have started for a claiming price this year or last year. There is a range of eligibility - two of the races are open to horses who have started for a claiming price of $12,500 or less, while at the other end of the spectrum is a race open to horses who have started for any claiming price, no matter how much.

All in all, it should be an interesting day of racing. The purses are generally larger than most of these claimers normally run for, so the fields should be large. I would not be surprised to see horses ship in from other tracks as well. There are probably some trainers who have what I would call "starter handicap specialists", who have run for a tag last year and can now use that fact to enter a race such as this even though the horse may have been competing against much tougher competition recently.

Anyway, I thought this would provide an interesting and competitive handicapping puzzle.

The 10 race card should be enough to handle without any simos.