Saratoga Diary: Week 7 Wrap-Up

by DICK POWELL

Sixty-five races were run in the final week of Saratoga (one was a steeplechase). Only four came off the turf and the average field size was 8.43. The average win price was $11.35. Twenty-one favorites won the 65 races for a win percentage of 32%.

Week 7 was the Chad Brown show as he won 11 times. This was hardly surprising since he only won three races the previous week and he seemed have at least one starter in every race. Javier Castellano won six of them and Jose Ortiz won four. Seven came on the turf and four were on the dirt.

Kiaran McLaughlin won four races while Linda Rice and Rudy Rodriguez won three races each. Todd Pletcher sputtered to the finish line with only two wins in the final week. Ouch!

Javier Castellano had a big, final week with 10 wins -- six for Chad. He was followed by Jose Ortiz who had nine and his brother, Irad, had seven. David Cohen finished with seven wins in the final week and actually won a turf race. For the meet, he won 17 races and 16 of them came on the dirt. Luis Saez finished well with seven wins to give him 33 for the meet.

There were 35 races run on the dirt in week seven. All came on fast tracks. Four were off-the-turf events but they were run on fast tracks. The average field size was 8.46 and the average win price was $11.02. Favorites won 11 times for a win percentage of 31.4%. There were 28 races run on the turf. The average field size was 8.69 and the average win price was $12.07. Favorites won nine times for a win percentage of 32%. These numbers are remarkably consistent for the different surfaces.

Of the 29 races run on the turf, 14 were run on the inner turf course. Four favorites won for a win percentage of 28.6% and the average win price was $12.41. Fifteen races were run on the Mellon turf course. Five favorites won for a win percentage of 33.3% and the average win price was $11.76. Of the 15 races run on the Mellon turf course, eight were turf sprints. Three favorites won for a win percentage of 37.5% and the average win price was $12.22 and that was with an average field size of 9.38.

If it seemed like every time you looked up and one of Tapit's offspring was winning, you were right.

SIRE	WINS	DIRT	TURF
Tapit	12	7	5
Into Mischief	9	7	2
Shanghai Bobby	8	7	1
More Than Ready	8	3	5
Freud	7	2	5
Flatter	7	7	0
War Front	7	1	6

War Front had the most turf winners with six and Tapit, More than Ready and Freud were tied with five. On dirt, Tapit, Into Mischief, Shanghai Bobby and Flatter all had seven winners. With that kind of versatility, it shows why Tapit was the leading sire since his results match the division of dirt and turf races here -- 247 dirt races and 165 turf races. War Front just doesn't get enough winners on the dirt even though he himself never raced on turf, was a graded stakes winner on the Saratoga dirt, and broke his maiden on it by 11 1/2 lengths.

Wednesday, I will take a deep dive on the 40 days of racing here and see what trends were present and what we can profit from going forwards.