Two at Toga (2025)

[moses]

Wednesday.

Race 3. #6 Russi 6/1. Here’s a horse from the Bond barn that should have a real shot in this competitive turf sprint. Russi was wide throughout in his first off the layoff and I thought he was more impressive than Vacation Dance that day as Russi had no cover the entire race but still finished willingly. That’s the type of effort I love to see off the layoff. I’d like to see Javy save some ground this time around, but even if he gets stuck wide, he should be ready to move forward.

Race 8. #5 Sushi 20/1. Carmouche has been riding great and Delgado usually sends live horses up to Saratoga. I thought her turf race was sneaky good as she didn’t have a great start, was close to the pace, got uncomfortable and steadied causing her to drop back and then still was game to run on in the stretch. They tried to get her back on turf last out but it rained off and she won. It would have been easy to keep her on dirt after that but they want to put her back on the grass. Pedigree suggests she will be just fine going added ground. This is a step up but her form on turf is much better imo than her figures suggest.

Thursday.

Race 5. #3 Hedge 9/2. Early in this meet, the Kentucky horses seemed to dominate the horses coming from other circuits. I'm not sure if that trend has held up but I want to take a shot here with Hedge who exits a series of allowance races in Kentucky against much better horses than he'll face here. I'm not sold on Tactical Trackstar's race last out. Bye Bye Miles may be tough but I wasn't overly impressed with the field he faced last race. Ben Colebrook doesn't send horses to Saratoga often and he'll ship this one in from Keeneland (positive ROI on shippers over the last 5 years.) Colebrook has only sent 3 horses to the NY circuit in the last 5 years, winning 1 of those races (the dominant win by Raise Cain in the Gotham a few years ago.)

Race 7. #6 One More Freud 6/1. One More Freud goes 1st off the claim for Mike Maker (19% win rate) after getting claimed for $35,000 following his impressive 14-length debut victory. The waters obviously get deeper here as that didn't seem like much of a field that he beat last out. Still, he holds a major advantage with the highest last out BSF and TF figure. He draws Ricardo Santana, who has continued to ride well during the Saratoga meet. Importantly, his pedigree has plenty of reason to be optimistic that he can run on turf. During his impressive debut, he showed off a long stride and and drew off easily as soon as he hit the top of the stretch. Despite all this, he's likely to fly under the radar as Dr. Agne will get to try turf for the first time and is out of the multiple G1 winning mare Lady Eli. You've also got a Pletcher horse, Klaravich/Chad/Prat horse, and Clement horse as well as a Godolphin homebred and John Oxley colt trained by Mark Casse. It wouldn't shock me one bit for this horse to be much higher than 6/1.