To the delight of a zillion racing fans, this is a wonderful time of the year. It’s opening week at Saratoga Race Course. The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club then kicks off its summer season next week on July 21.
The first week of action at Saratoga is highlighted by the Grade I Chad Brown Stakes, officially known as the Diana Stakes. I say it’s the Chad Brown Stakes because the four-time Eclipse Award winner trains four of the five entrants in the 1 1/8-mile grass affair, which will be contested this Saturday (July 15).
The only Diana runner not residing in Brown’s Saratoga barn is Fev Rover. Hall of Famer Mark Casse trains Fev Rover.
I am hoping that I pick the winner of the Diana. If I do, it’ll be three straight stakes races in which I’ve selected the winner for Xpressbet.com.
I correctly tabbed Two Phil’s to win the Grade III Ohio Derby on June 24. Granted, that was no real big deal. After all, Two Phil’s was a 3-5 favorite.
I subsequently picked the winner of the Grade I Stephen Foster Stakes on July 1. West Will Power also won as the betting choice, but at a much better 2-1.
As for deciding who to make my top pick in the Diana, I was torn. Do I go with In Italian, who is an obvious choice? Or do I stick my neck out and go with a 4-year-old filly at a much better price, a filly I think has the possibility -- I repeat, possibility -- of becoming a star?
“What the heck,” I thought. “I’m going for it.”
And so my top choice in the Diana is Whitebeam, who is coming off a 2 1/2-length victory in Pimlico’s Grade III Gallorette Stakes on May 20.
Is the most likely scenario this Saturday a win by In Italian? Yes. The 5-year-old Dubawi mare has won four Grade I races in her last five starts. Her lone defeat during that sequence came when she finished second to Tuesday in the Grade I Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf.
In Italian won last year’s Diana at 8-1. Her odds Saturday will be nowhere close to that high. She is expected to be an odds-on favorite this time.
“This filly is the best horse I have in training right now,” Brown said in an article for horseracingnation.com written by Tom Pedulla. “Although she has yet to win a Breeders’ Cup race or an Eclipse Award, she’s among the top fillies I’ve ever trained.”
That’s quite a statement from Brown, who has trained female Eclipse Award-winning grass champions Stacelita (2012), Zagora (2013) Dayatthespa (2014), Lady Eli (2017), Sistercharlie (2018), Uni (2019) and Regal Glory (2022).
Based on In Italian’s speed figures and class, she is likely to win a second Diana. Then why in the world would I pick someone else? Well, something to keep in mind is In Italian will be running Saturday at the track known as “the graveyard of favorites,” a nickname that stems from some of racing’s all-time greats being upset there, such as:
--The aptly named Upset’s defeat of mighty Man o’ War in the 1919 Sanford Stakes. It was the lone loss by Man o’ War in his 21-race career.
--Jim Dandy’s 100-1 shocker in the 1930 Travers Stakes in which the runner-up was Triple Crown winner Gallant Fox.
--Onion’s stunning triumph in the 1973 Whitney Stakes over Triple Crown winner Secretariat.
--Triple Crown winner American Pharoah’s defeat when he had to settle for second in the 2015 Travers, which was won by 16-1 Keen Ice.
If the likes of Man o’ War, Gallant Fox, Secretariat and American Pharoah can get beat as heavy favorites at Saratoga, then why not In Italian? And so I’m going to try and beat In Italian with Whitebeam.
One of the reasons I’m making Whitebeam my top pick in the Diana is I am a huge Juddmonte fan. Juddmonte bred and races Whitebeam. Why do I like Juddmonte? To a large extent it’s because that Thoroughbred operation has been a symbol of quality for decades, as exemplified by such elite equine performers as Dancing Brave, Frankel, Arrogate and Enable.
Juddmonte has previously won the Diana with Tates Creek in 2002 and Proviso in 2010.
Whitebeam won three times and finished worse than third just once in six European starts before coming to this country. The only time she didn’t finish 1-2-3 overseas was when she ran ninth at Longchamp last fall, an effort that probably can be excused because of the heavy ground.
In Whitebeam’s United States debut, she lost by a neck when second in Aqueduct’s ungraded Plenty of Grace Stakes on April 16. That was followed by her win in the Gallorette.
I liked the way that Whitebeam sat off the early pace in the Gallorette, took command in upper stretch and drew away in the final furlong. True, her Beyer Speed Figure was only a 94, which does not come close to measuring up to In Italian’s five most recent Beyers -- 102, 104, 104, 100, 103.
But I think there is a chance that we have not seen the best from Whitebeam yet. If that’s true, the 4-year-old Caravaggio filly just might have the potential to go out there and post a triple-digit Beyer.
It does seem that Brown has a very high opinion of Whitebeam.
After the Gallorette, Brown said: “She’s trained super since she came in to me over the winter from Juddmonte. I was actually surprised she got beat last time. She had an outside post in a short field and she kind of got jammed up off a slow pace, wide, pulling the whole way and just missed. It was a sloppy trip. She came out of that and trained brilliantly. I think getting on the faster, firmer turf is really going to be beneficial for her. She just loved it out there today.”
Pedulla wrote this week that Whitebeam “might be ready for prime time.” The filly is racing at the Grade I level for the first time in the Diana.
“She’s stepping up significantly in class, but she is a filly I’ve loved since she arrived from Juddmonte,” Pedulla quoted Brown as saying.
Below are my selections for the Diana Stakes:
- Whitebeam
- In Italian
- Marketsegmentation
- Fluffy Socks
Marketsegmentation is coming off a win in the Grade I New York Stakes on June 9. It was her third straight victory. In seven lifetime starts, the 4-year-old daughter of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah has never finished worse than third.
Fluffy Socks, a 5-year-old Slumber mare, makes her second 2023 start after winning the Grade II Churchill Distaff Mile on May 6. That snapped her seven-race losing streak.
Brown has won the Diana a record seven times (Zagora in 2011, Dacita in 2016, Lady Eli in 2017, Sistercharlie in 2018-19, Rushing Fall in 2020 and In Italian in 2023).
The Brown-trained quartet in the 2023 Diana will be seeking to emulate the trainer’s 1-2-3-4 finish in the 2022 Diana with In Italian, Technical Analysis, Bleecker Street and Rougir.
Fev Rover, the only Diana entrant who can spoil a repeat 1-2-3-4 finish by Brown trainees this Saturday, took Woodbine’s Grade II Nassau Stakes in her 2023 debut on July 1. The 5-year-old Gutaifan mare won the Nassau by a widening 4 1/4 lengths.
SARATOGA’S ORIGIN GOES BACK TO LINCOLN
As I noted last year, when Thoroughbred racing was first conducted at Saratoga on Aug. 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln was president and the Civil War was raging.
In William H.P. Robertson’s book “The History of Racing in America,” he wrote: “The smoke from the battle of Gettysburg scarcely had evaporated when America’s oldest existing race track began operations. Precisely one month after Pickett’s charge against Cemetery Ridge, horse hooves began pounding against the turf at Saratoga, senior citizen and grande dame among American racing centers.”
According to the media guide on the nyra.com website, the first Saratoga meet consisted of just four days. It was staged by gambler, casino owner, ex-boxing champion and future congressman John “Old Smoke” Morrissey.
Emboldened by the success of that first four-day meet, Morrissey enlisted his friends John R. Hunter, Leonard Jerome and William Travers to form the Saratoga Association.
The second Saratoga meet in 1864 expanded to six days. The first Travers Stakes was run that year, 11 years before the first Kentucky Derby.
A colt by the name of Kentucky won the inaugural Travers Stakes, a race named after one of his owners, the aforementioned William Travers.
The first Travers was one of Kentucky’s 21 victories from 23 lifetime starts. A son of the legendary sire Lexington, Kentucky put together a 20-race winning streak during one stretch of his career.
This year’s 154rd running of the Grade I, $1.25 million Travers will be decided on Aug. 26.
A different horse won each of the three Triple Crown races this year -- Mage (the Kentucky Derby), National Treasure (the Preakness Stakes), Arcangelo (the Belmont Stakes). Insofar as there is no clear-cut leader at this time in the 3-year-old male division, the Travers could go a long way toward determining who gets the 2023 Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old male, just as it did the past two years.
Essential Quality in 2021 and Epicenter in 2022 both won the Travers while on their way to being voted an Eclipse Award as champion 3-year-old male.
Below is my current Top 10 in the 3-year-old male division:
Rank Horse (Comment)
- Mage
- Arcangelo
- Forte
- Arabian Knight
- Arabian Lion
- National Treasure
- Disarm
- Extra Anejo
- Geaux Rocket Ride
- Tapit Trice
MIRAHMADI NEW ANNOUNCER AT SARATOGA
Frank Mirahmadi, the voice of Santa Anita, is the new track announcer at Saratoga this summer.
“I’m excited and looking forward to it,” Mirahmadi told me earlier this week regarding his Spa gig before he departed for New York. “It’s an honor to be the track announcer at Saratoga. But that being said, Santa Anita is -- and always will be -- where I want to be calling races more than anywhere. As I’ve said many, many, many times, Santa Anita is known as the Great Race Place, but to me it’s the Greatest Race Place.”
Many years ago, before I met Mirahmadi, I actually recommended him for an announcing job. Back in 2000, I was working as the media relations manager at Lone Star Park. The track was in need of a track announcer that year after John G. Dooley had vacated the position to call the races at Arlington Park.
Lone Star in 2000 was trying to woo Michael Wrona away from Hollywood Park. When it looked for a time that Lone Star was going to be unsuccessful in luring Wrona away from Hollywood Park, I said to Darren Rogers, Lone Star’s director of media relations, that Mirahmadi was someone Lone Star management should seriously consider to be the track announcer.
“Is that the guy who does impersonations?” Rogers asked.
“Yes, he is,” I said. “But I’m telling you, he does a good job calling races as Frank Mirahmadi. I heard him call the races as himself a lot at Turf Paradise when I was working for the Racing Form in Phoenix.
“And besides, to think of it in terms of being in the media relations business, I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world for Lone Star to have a track announcer who is capable of doing impersonations if it just so happens that an occasion calls for it.”
It turned out that Lone Star did hire Wrona.
Four years later, when I was a television broadcaster for HRTV, I met Mirahmadi for the first time. HRTV sent me to Louisiana Downs for the Super Derby. Mirahmadi was calling the races there.
Early in the morning the day after I had flown from Los Angeles to Shreveport, Mirahmadi knocked on my hotel door. He had come to my hotel to take me out to the track that morning.
The first thing that Mirahmadi told me was that he had enjoyed reading my columns that had appeared on the back page of the Los Angeles edition of the Racing Form in the early 1980s. I thanked him. What Mirahmadi said next took me by surprise.
“I’m going to be the track announcer at Santa Anita someday.”
I thought, “Good for you to have a goal like that.” I figured the odds were about a million to one that this fellow who was calling races at Louisiana Downs would ever be the track announcer at Santa Anita.
But, lo and behold, Mirahmadi did get his dream job. The native of Southern California became the full-time track announcer at Santa Anita in 2018. To me, this was like a kid saying he’s going to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Yankees someday and then it actually happens.
When Mirahmadi became the voice of Santa Anita, I was so thrilled for him. I couldn’t help but think back to the morning all those years earlier in Louisiana when he told me it would happen someday. And I will say that during all the years that I have known him, I am not aware of any other person being more of an advocate for Santa Anita than Frank Mirahmadi.
BAFFERT CONTINUES LOS AL DERBY DOMINANCE
Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert’s success in the Los Alamitos Derby continues to be ridiculous.
Reincarnate last Saturday provided Baffert with his seventh consecutive Los Al Derby victory.
Baffert has won eight of the 10 editions of the race when it has been run at Los Alamitos. He previously won it five times when it was the Swaps Stakes and held at Hollywood Park.
Baffert’s 13 winners of this race are listed below, with the Beyer Speed Figure in parentheses:
- 2023 Reincarnate (91)
- 2022 High Connection (89)
- 2021 Classier (89)
- 2020 Uncle Chuck (94)
- 2019 Game Winner (96)
- 2018 Once On Whiskey (86)
- 2017 West Coast (100)
- 2015 Gimme Da Lute (102)
- 2012 Blueskiesnrainbows (103)*
- 2009 Misremembered (101)*
- 2003 During (96)*
- 2001 Congaree (106)*
- 2000 Captain Steve (111)*
*Run at Hollywood Park as the Swaps Stakes
In last Saturday’s renewal of the Los Alamitos Derby, Reincarnate led from start to finish as the even-money favorite. He won by 2 1/4 lengths while completing 1 1/8 miles in 1:48.72. Skinner finished second as the 6-5 second choice in the betting. Prince Abu Dhabi ended up third at 23-1 in the field of five.
Reincarnate is by Good Magic, who won the 2017 BC Juvenile as a maiden and was voted the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male. He then would have been a Kentucky Derby winner the following year if not having to settle for second behind the Baffert-trained Justify, who went on to swept the Triple Crown.
In Reincarnate’s most recent start prior to the Los Al Derby, he finished 13th in the Kentucky Derby when he paid the price for being too close to a fast early pace.
TOP 10 IN THIS WEEK’S NTRA TOP THOROUGHBRED POLL
Rank Points Horse (First-Place Votes)
- 315 Cody’s Wish (27)
- 271 Elite Power (5)
- 220 Clairiere
- 167 West Will Power
- 159 Up to the Mark
- 142 In Italian
- 133 Defunded
- 116 Caravel
- 49 Art Collector
- 36 Goodnight Olive
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