Robin Goodfellow’s racing tips: Best bets for Monday, August 7
Sportsmail's racing expert Robin Goodfellow delivers his tips for Monday's meetings at Windsor, Ripon and Ayr.
Month: August 2023
The Week in Review: Will Maple Leaf Mel Rest Alongside Go For Wand?
Sunday dawned emotionally overcast for a racing world still trying to process Saturday's stunning, life-ending injury to the unbeaten New York-bred filly Maple Leaf Mel (Cross Traffic), who was steps from victory in the GI Test S. at Saratoga when she crashed to the track with a catastrophic injury to her right foreleg. She was euthanized on the spot, while jockey Joel Rosario escaped serious injury (three lip stitches) and was off his Sunday mounts.
The very public, deep-stretch tragedy on a huge day of racing is comparable to the fatal fall of Go For Wand, who shattered her right front ankle while holding a slim lead and battling at the sixteenth pole in the 1990 GI Breeders' Cup Distaff at Belmont Park.
The next evening, in an unannounced ceremony that was closed to the public, Go For Wand was buried in the infield at Saratoga. Her connections had declined a New York Racing Association offer to inter the two-time champion filly in the Belmont infield, wishing instead to have her final resting place be the site of her two greatest triumphs, nine days apart in August 1990, in the Test S. and GI Alabama S.
Thirty-three summers later, the way this sort of heart-wrenching racetrack news spreads is vastly different.
In 1990, Sunday newspapers provided the bulk of next-day coverage nationwide, with racing's two weeklies and a long-form piece in Sports Illustrated anchoring the follow-up coverage.
In 2023, both the news of Maple Leaf Mel's demise–and public commentary on it–were available via social media within seconds of the tragedy.
Although that particular medium in this day and age is notorious for amplifying the most cruel and callous aspects of any subject it touches, acts of compassion and class have managed to shine through, and Maple Leaf Mel's owner (retired football coach Bill Parcells's August Dawn Farm) and namesake trainer (Melanie Giddings) were flooded with online condolences.
One poignant show of kindness and respect involved the connections of 'TDN Rising Star' Pretty Mischievous (Into Mischief), who inherited the Test win when Maple Leaf Mel fell, opting not to enter the winner's circle after the race and pose for celebratory photos.
The next morning, those same connections–owner/breeder Godolphin and trainer Brendan Walsh–honored the fallen filly by placing the unworn Test floral wreath in front of Maple Leaf Mel's empty stall in Giddings's barn 69 on the Saratoga backstretch.
“Thank you everyone for your messages. I can't even pull myself together right now or know when I will ever be able to,” Giddings wrote Sunday morning on Twitter, punctuating her gratitude and mourning with a broken-heart emoji. “Maple Leaf Mel's health and happiness took priority over my own for the last two years and now I'm lost without her. She was a true Grade I champion.”
Maple Leaf Mel won her first two races at the Spa last summer before breaking through the New York-bred ranks and beating Grade III company in back-to-back starts at Pimlico and Belmont. She won every single one of her first five starts on the lead, and died trying the same way in her first attempt against Grade I company.
Perhaps NYRA will consider extending an invitation to Maple Leaf Mel's connections to have this special filly, too, grace Saratoga in perpetuity with a burial spot alongside Go For Wand in the track's infield.
Classic next for White Abarrio
Cody's Wish (Curlin), sent off at .45-1 in the wagering while seeking his first win beyond a mile, had the look of an overbet favorite in Saturday's GI Whitney S. at Saratoga.
Trouble was, it was difficult to discern which of his five rivals was going to step up and produce the triple-digit Beyer Speed Figure that seemed required to halt the middle-distance specialist's six-race win streak that extended back 15 months.
Bettors who landed on White Abarrio (Race Day) got rewarded at 10-1 for figuring out he was going to uncork the race of his life (110 Beyer).
At his best when prominently paced, White Abarrio sat just off the pacemaker under Irad Ortiz, Jr., stalking opening splits of :24.21, :23.86 and :23.54 before seizing the lead just before the quarter pole.
Cody's Wish was winding up for another one of his patented loop-the-group moves from last, but jockey Junior Alvarado would later concede he was “very worried” on the far turn that the favorite wasn't travelling as confidently as he usually did.
White Abarrio surged in the stretch, extending his margin to 6 1/4 lengths at the wire for a 1:48.45 finish. He was ridden out through a :24.48 fourth quarter and a :12.16 final furlong.
With the Whitney carrying “Win and You're In” berth to the GI Breeders' Cup Classic, White Abarrio's connections are now mulling training him up to 10 furlongs on the first Saturday in November.
White Abarrio, who hammered for relatively affordable prices at auction ($7,500 OBSWIN; $40,000 OBSMAR), was an underdog Triple Crown prospect last season. His pros have always been efficiency, athleticism, and a knack for finding ways to win even when overmatched on paper. A chief con, though, was that up until Saturday, he was strictly a horse-for-course at Gulfstream, where he was 5-for-6 lifetime while going 0-for-7 at all other tracks.
White Abarrio now owns two Grade I victories over nine furlongs (the other was the 2022 Florida Derby).
Skeptics might question his ability to get 10 furlongs in the Classic based on his only other try at that distance, a 16th-place finish in last year's GI Kentucky Derby.
But that Derby effort wasn't as poor as it appears on paper. White Abarrio got lost in the shuffle early on when a couple of bigger horses outmuscled him for position, then journeyed five- and seven-wide through both turns before getting hooked 10 wide for the drive. He kept plugging away until the eighth pole, but got wrapped up for safekeeping when it was apparent he wouldn't attain a significant placing.
Months Morph into Years
Jockey Juan Hernandez, currently topping the Del Mar standings in both wins and purse earnings going into Sunday's racing, made the most of his one and only riding opportunity there on Saturday when he guided Adare Manor (Uncle Mo) to an easy win in the GI Clement L. Hirsch S.
Hernandez would have been in demand for additional mounts, but he was serving the first of a three-day riding suspension on Saturday for altering course without sufficient clearance that resulted in a disqualification earlier in the Del Mar meet. California rules, however, allow suspended riders to participate in “designated” stakes races.
The informative Twitter site Racing Stats & Info (@GaryDougherty) comes up with the occasional esoteric data nugget that you won't find anywhere else, and a posting from last week highlighted the longest current streaks by jockeys in terms of consecutive months in which they've won a graded stakes.
Updating Dougherty's list through Saturday's races, Irad Ortiz now leads with 26 straight months winning at least one graded stakes. Hernandez is second with 23. Flavien Prat ranks third with 12. Luis Saez is fourth with 10.
Those are remarkable numbers considering it takes not only horsepower, but the good fortune to remain injury-free for such an extended period of time in such a dangerous profession.
The post The Week in Review: Will Maple Leaf Mel Rest Alongside Go For Wand? appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Major Thoroughbred Economic Metrics Down in July
Wagering on U.S. races, available and paid purses and the total number of races days each saw declines to varying degrees during the month of July, according to information released by Equibase Sunday.
Total wagering of $1.067 billion on races during the month represented a 6.68% decrease on the corresponding figure from 2022, while available purses of $123.3 million was off by just over 1% year over year. Paid purses of $117.6 million was down 2.48%, while the total number of race days dropped from 453 to 423 (6.62%). Average field size in July came in at just over seven runners per race, up 1.6% on 2022, while average daily wagering was virtually static at $2,524,087. Average available purses per race day rached $291,567, an improvement of 9.56% from last July.
For the first seven months of 2023, wagering on U.S. races declined 3.57% to $7.142 billion, while the available and paid purse money increased by 1.22% and 0.92%, respectively. Average daily wagering of $3.1 million is fractionally ahead of last year and average available purses per race day increased by 9.53% to $316,169.
The post Major Thoroughbred Economic Metrics Down in July appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Veteran Horseman Kruljac Strikes Gold With Cal-Bred Star The Chose Vron
Eric Kruljac may not be a household name. In fact, he may not make many race fans' most-recognizable-trainers list. But if the star of his barn, California-bred The Chosen Vron, continues to win races like he did in the Bing Crosby (G1) July 29 at Del Mar, that will all change.
The veteran trainer with the perpetual smile turned 70 in February and his level of experience in horseracing is second to none. He grew up on a California ranch between Carmel and Salinas and spent many a day of his youth hanging out in the barn of his father's trainer, Hall of Famer Buster Millerick.
When a broken ankle ended a promising football career in college, he started a successful private detective business. It was not like the private detectives you see on TV.
“No, far less glamorous,” Kruljac said. “When an insurance adjuster feels a certain claimant is faking his injuries or cheating the system, they'll hire an investigator to go out and surveil the person. You take film that shows the person doing all sorts of things, playing football or baseball. We got 400 feet of film of a guy that was loading 125 pound bales of hay onto a truck hours after he left his doctor in a wheelchair wearing a neck brace.”
As a side, Kruljac bought and sold racehorses and his brother trained them. This went on for about 16 years until his brother decided to quit training. Kruljac, in turn, decided to quit the private detective business and took up training full time.
“I gave up the money to be a broke horseman,” he said with a smile. “Investigating workman comp claims provided me with the money to buy broodmares. When my brother quit training, I decided to train by myself and it's been that way for 30 years.
“There was no pressure because I had partnerships that I led,” Kruljac continued. “When I started training, the owners and partners went along with it. I became a seven days a week guy.”
Kruljac started with a small string at Turf Paradise in Phoenix in the winters, shifting to California the rest of the year. In 2008, he moved to the Golden State full time.
His first taste of Grade 1 success came in 2005 when his mare Leave Me Alone won the Test (G1) at Saratoga. Kruljac bought her for $35,000 at a sale not far from Del Mar.
“I had hooked up with a lawyer who had just made a killing on a big lawsuit,” Kruljac recalls. “He wanted to invest in horses.
“There was a sale out by Horse Park on the other side of the freeway east of Del Mar,” Kruljac continued. “I didn't think he'd be interested because he wanted Kentucky stock, but when we met at the races later I told him I had been at this little Cal-bred sale. He asked, 'Did you see anything you like?' and I told him there was this filly that is the most perfect, athletic thing I had ever seen but she's crazy and he said, 'Why don't you buy her for me.'”
Kruljac trained Leave Me Alone until 2006 when she was retired with $653,330 in earnings. The following year, Summer Wind Farm paid $1 million for the California-bred daughter of Bold Badgett in foal to A.P. Indy at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Fall Mixed Sale.
Fast forward to 2023 and Kruljac is back in the catbird seat, training prospective Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) contender The Chosen Vron.
“He's doing great,” Kruljac said of the 5-year-old Vronksy gelding he co-owns with Sondereker Racing LLC, Robert S. Fetkin, and Richard Thornburgh. “He got three easy days (after the Bing Crosby) and we went back to the track yesterday (Friday) and jogged a mile. We did the same thing this (Saturday) morning. We'll give him a couple of easy weeks and then put a plan together.”
Overall, the ultra-consistent The Chosen Vron has a 13-1-2 record from 17 career starts and $1,032,678 in lifetime earnings.
Meanwhile, Kruljac has not lost his interest in breeding.
“I have pieces of five mares,” Kruljac said. “They're all up at Legacy Ranch and they're all going to Clubhouse Ride. Breeding is in my blood.”
Said the grandson of a Hall of Fame cattle breeder.
The post Veteran Horseman Kruljac Strikes Gold With Cal-Bred Star The Chose Vron appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
