Here is the first Asmussen horse running at Saratoga in Race 6 on Saturday. Powerful is a debuter from the Asmussen barn. Asmussen is 52-14-5-6 at the Spa over the last five years with a decent ROI of 46%. He fetched $525K at the Kee Sep sale last year. He is by a decent debut sire in Nyquist (14% overall with 16% debuting 2YO). Dam has two winners from two starters and his sibling won debut at Saratoga in a $50K MCL. Ice cold Tyler G takes over the mount. I like that work at the end of June at Kee as well. Looks like a tough field as you would expect with 2YO MSW at Saratoga on a Saturday. Listed at odds of 9/2.

The field includes a Phelpsy with a million dollar price tag from the connections of Chad and Irad. Casse has a second time starter who set the pace at GP as the odds on favorite and got overtaken late. Pletcher has a third timer who could not get it done the first two times at CD, but was second to eventual stakes winner Mo Strike. Brisset, Nevin, Cox and Mott (actually he has two) all have decent looking debuters as well, but they do not have very good records with firsters at the Spa. I still need to look at the workout report, but I plan at this point to use Powerful (9/2), Phelpsy (7/2) and Bring Theband Home (6/1) on my multi-race tickets.