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Whistling past the Graveyard


 

Saratoga got me again this year.  Picking the alternatives to the favorites at Saratoga is very hard. Everybody has a story. And if you are picking based on stories, it’s hard to do better than luck. Decent but distant stables show up and surprise. But not the ones I picked. Life is to learn.

Looking at yesterday’s Perfect Sting Stakes, I went with Proctor Street [#6]. Brendan Walsh often seems to ‘steal’ one, bringing richly-bred horses from Kentucky. 

At a little lower morning line price was Dynamic Pricing [#5], named after random rich guy concerns, like many of Chad  Brown’s horses. The horse is a winner, and most importantly is stepping down. Dylan Davis, who is getting hot again at the end of the Saratoga Meet, provided a brave, masterful, inside, closing ride to beat my horse, Proctor Street, which had nearly gained the lead at mid-stretch.

Put another way: Dylan Davis made a great inside move at the top of the stretch...and bested my choice, Proctor Street, by a widening length at 1 mile.

 The Brown horse won slightly - leaving the message for learning: message that 1-a marked class drop is worth a view; 2-Edging against an established jockey can be a bad move.

My Twitter notes on Dynamic Pricing: Her previous outs were pretty consistent 93-100-94. 

PROCTOR STREET came in 3rd. The charts tell us this horse was wide on the far turn, rallied to  a furlong out hooking up in head to head combat with foe Raqiya , seized narrow  command just out sid e the sixteenth marker, got displaced in concert with her main danger seventy yards from  home and ran on to preserve the show honors.

But there's always tomorrow, and a $28 payout on Antiquarian made the doldrums roll away.

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