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By Mike Kratville
The key to this race is weather, as there are flash flood warnings for Saratoga right now (Friday afternoon) with more heavy rain in the forecast for tonight. As you might imagine, there is a real question whether this race will be kept on the grass or moved to the dirt. If I had to guess right now, I would guess off the turf but we will look at the race both ways. The second problem besides predicting the surface to be run on, is predicting which horses will scratch-out no matter which surface it is run on. These are the type of races where a 10-horse field is reduced to 4 horses. For those of you following at home, most of the races I have handicapped have had one or more of my top picks scratch the last 2 weeks including Wednesday's Schuylerville at Saratoga.
If it stays on the turf, it will be a terribly deep surface and will favor the closers. The best closers in this field would be:
#10 Forever Together
#3 Rutherienne
#1 Mushka
Having said that, if the pressers scratch out, one could always fear a horse which can go wire to wire on an off surface like #5 Criticism. Thus, if the close pressers like #2 Quiet Meadow, #6 Carribean Sunset, and #8 Colina-Verde remain then it will be harder to steal the race off the front.
If this race moves to a muddy dirt surface, expect many scratches but some horses which very well could remain and run well would include:
#1 Muska (ran 4th in Grade 1 at Saratoga last year)
#4 Indescribable (ran 3rd in Grade 1 last year at Saratoga)
#5 Criticism (ran 3rd in Grade 3 at Belmont in last race)
#9 Tejida (Ran 3rd on synthetic in Grade 3 at Keeneland in April) and;
#10 Forever Together (Ran a 109.98 pace call on dirt at Gulfstream last year).
If all 5 of these ending up running on the dirt, one can foresee #5 Criticism trying to take the lead with #10 Forever Together in hot pursuit with #4 Indescribable and #9 Tejida not too far off either. If #5 Criticism is allowed to run slow fractions as might be expected, then the deep closer (#1 Mushka) probably has little chance to light the board. But it is not out of the question that #10 Forever Together might just try and go wire to wire as well (and probably would if it tried to).
While #10 Forever Together probably will be the favorite on dirt too, because of value reasons alone, I might be tempted to lean towards #4 Indescribable and #9 Tejida and hope that they can find a way to get up.
Pay close attention to which surface the race is run on, make sure to note which remaining horses might run well on dirt, and then still play for value.
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Mike Kratville is co-host of the `Pick More Winners' seminar series at Horsemens Park in Omaha, Nebraska. He has designed a computer horse racing program and is also creating a turf racing program and video.
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