A quiet night here at work, leaving much time for reading the Racing Form and contemplating my navel.

Saturday-- caught the late P3 on a 6x5x5 ticket which resulted in an embarassingly marginal profit. There were however some exciting moments as both Original Spin (I had bet her in the BC Juvie Filly race last year) and Sun King were on the ticket.

If you followed Saturday's Saratoga stakes races on ESPN, you had to be (a) infuriated that the start of ESPN's horse racing program was (again) pre- empted,this time for the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and (b)very impressed with Ouija Board. OB is one of the world's best runners in recent years and has been unappreciated because she has done most of her work across the pond. I hope Lord Derby throws her in against males in the BC Turf Classic in what will most likely be her last race.

Sunday at Saratoga:

It seems like each Summer at the Spa you will have at least one of each of the following (a)Finger Lakes shipper wins at high odds; (b) Suffolk shipper winning at high odds; (c) horse winning a flat race coming out of jump races. In Sunday's first you have Gryffindor going from jumps to flat for Thomas Voss. Gryffindor has run well over the Saratoga turf courses in the past and might be a decent price in an open NYB scramble.

Race 2 is a 5 furlong 2YO dash, and my opinion is that 5f races at Saratoga, just like 4-1/2 furlong races at AQ and 5 furlong races at Belmont, drastically favor inside posts. De Lucia, for the "Blasimussen" barn, is bred precociously (Songandaprayer)and shows a nice gate work over Saratoga's main track. TAP has a Melnyk homebred who is working well at Mth which sets up a confrontation between what are arguably the 2 most prolific win early 2YO operations in racing. (The jock assignments are confusing in this race: Jara, who you would expect to ride for Kiaran McLaughlin, rides for Pletcher; Gomez, who you would expect to see riding for Pletcher, rides for Blasimussen).

The "Nontest", er Contest. My pet peeve about this exercise is borne out by Sunday's Saratoga recap:

Race 1-- both services have same top 2 picks
Race 2-- 2YOs
Race 3-- both services have same top 3, with order of top 2 reversed
Race 4-- both services have same top pick
Race 5-- both services have same top 3 in same order
Race 7-- both services have same top 2 in same order
Race 8-- After the scratch of Red Zipper, both services have top 2 in same order
Race 10- both services have same top pick.

When all is said and done, I might want to go back and identify how many times TG and Rags put the same animal on top, how many times these "twice annointed" animals won, and what the ROI on these animals was.