Rainy days and Mondays
Rain creates challenges with 33 scratches and a long shot winner in the feature
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » W hen the Karen Carpenter sang her 1971 hit Rainy Days and Mondays, she may have been singing about the first Monday of this year’s Saratoga Race Course season.
More than 30 horses were scratched from the nine-race card and three of the four scheduled turf races were moved to the main track, challenging the horses, jockeys and bettors alike.
Saratoga Springs native Dylan Davis figured out the secrets to success Monday, opening the day with a second place finish above the D. Wayne Lukas El Mas Puro and followed that up with a thirdplace finish on James Ryerson trained Formal Event.
He too was the victim of the weather, losing a ride on Soluble when the horse was scratched prior to the fifth race and was aboard Edward DeLauro’s Crea’s Bklyn Law for a sixth-place finish in the eighth race, his third of the day.
The former Blue Streak saw all his work pay off, winning his first race of the 2018 season aboard the Charlton Baker trained Silencia in the scratch shortened field.
“You definitely have to change your tactics of course,” Dylan Davis said after his opening second-place finish Monday. “With the sealed track more of a mindset of getting speed because the speed is holding because of the hard track, so they’re not really going to be grabbing it late and you have to be very aggressive on this dirt course, especially when it’s sealed.”
The track was graded as sloppy throughout Monday’s racing and forced Davis along with his entries to make adjustments.
“We have to make sure that the horse gets in that position, for me I especially want to be forwardly placed today, especially with a horse that is a closing horse you might have to wake him up a little bit earlier because they might not make that big closing move,” Davis said. “Most of the time you don’t see it, so today you really want to be forwardly placed.”
As a hired gun, Davis has to do his own homework on whether a horse is ready and able to make a solid run on a sloppy track, often a trial by fire, or in Monday’s case, rain.
“Sometimes it’s trial, of course
if the horse hasn’t hit the mud at all it’ going to be trial, but you do some homework beforehand and you’ve got to know a little about the father and mother,” Davis said. “You got to show the horse the way and hopefully he can handle it. If he can’t handle it, you’re just going to have to sit and wait a little bit and hopefully it comes with the run.”
As the fields tightened throughout the day, Davis’ first win came in the seven-scratch field of five horses, a maiden race for fillies and mares three-years-old and up.
Throughout Monday morning’s Saratoga Live, horse racing analyst Andy Serling talked about the opportunity for money to be made with the scratches if bet correctly.
A local couple juggled their early time under an umbrella or enjoying a break in the rain sitting on the steps near the finish line.
“I could sit home and watch the rain come down or I could come here to the track and have fun,” one better said. “I figure it’s going to be like that all day today, on and off. “I think it’s a little more challenging unless you know who the mudders are. I try to figure out who the mudders are, but sometimes it doesn’t really work.”
Davis took advantage of the smaller fields all day Monday.
“Any scratch helps the rider, the trainer, the owner because it moves us up in a spot that we could have missed with the full field,” Davis said. Like Andy (Serling) said, you never know who’s going to handle this track with the long shots and the long shots might come in and the bettors might catch a bet that they might be happy about and others not too much.”