Eclipse Stakes (G2) winner Skywire, runner-up Avie's Flatter, and third-place finisher Mr Ritz will square off in Sunday's $125,000 Seagram Cup Stakes (G3), at Woodbine.
Hall of Fame conditioner Josie Carroll will look to win her second straight Seagram crown when she sends out a pair of multiple stakes winners in Avie's Flatter and Mr Ritz, who took last year's running of the 1 1/16-mile main track race for 3-year-olds and upward.
The graded stakes victors meet up again with 4-year-old Skywire, the Mark Casse trainee who pulled off a 17-1 upset in the Eclipse on July 4 at Woodbine.
Ivan Dalos' homebred Avie's Flatter, a 4 year-old son of Flatter, fashions a record of 4-3-2 from 12 career starts. His last victory came in the Transylvania (G3) last April at Keeneland.
The Ontario-bred colt finished third in a 7 ½-furlong turf engagement to launch his 2020 campaign, following it up with the second-place effort in the Eclipse.
Avie's Flatter contested all three jewels in the Canadian Triple Crown, finishing second in the Queen's Plate and Prince of Wales, before a third-place performance in the Breeders' Stakes.
A bay son of Oasis Dream (GB) out of Que Puntual, Mr Ritz, bred and owned by Earle Mack, went off as the favorite in the Eclipse, crossing the wire third as the 3-5 choice.
Sporting a 5-3-2 record from 12 career starts, Mr Ritz, after taking his debut in 2017 at Kempton Park in England, came to North America, becoming a stakes winner in 2018 in Indiana before finishing third in the Ontario Derby (G3) at Woodbine.
In 2019, he posted two wins and two seconds in five starts. He won back-to-back stakes last August and September – both by 1 ¼ lengths – including an impressive showing in the Seagram on August 11.
“This is just a really nice horse that I believed was going to improve this year and he's proving us right,” said Carroll after the win.
One month after his Seagram triumph, Mr Ritz headed south and claimed his second consecutive stakes victory, this time in the $200,000 Presque Isle Mile. He stopped the clock in a track record 1:41.91 for the 1 1/16 miles.
Other Seagram contenders include Western Canadian invader Explode, a six-time winner from 12 starts, Jungle Fighter (3-2-1 from seven starts), a son of Animal Kingdom who will make his 4-year-old debut in the Seagram, and Chiefswood Stables' multiple graded stakes winner Tiz a Slam.
The complete field for the Seagram, which is scheduled as race seven of 10 on Sunday's 1 p.m. program, is listed below.
Fans can watch and wager on all the live action via HPIbet.com.
$125,000 SEAGRAM CUP
Post – Horse – Jockey – Trainer
1 – Skywire – Rafael Hernandez – Mark Casse
2 – Mr Ritz – Patrick Husbands – Josie Carroll
3 – Jungle Fighter – Davy Moran – Michael Doyle
4 – Cooler Mike – Kazushi Kimura – Nick Nosowenko
5 – Avie's Flatter – Luis Contreras – Josie Carroll
6 – Tiz a Slam – Steven Bahen – Roger Attfield
7 – Explode – Justin Stein – Stuart Simon
8 – Perfect Tapatino – Emma-Jayne Wilson – Roger Attfield
The post Woodbine’s Seagram Cup Looking Like Rematch Of Eclipse Stakes appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – At the very bottom on the left-hand side of the daily recap sheet you can find the answer to why the New York Racing Association opted to run at Saratoga this fan-free summer instead of staying downstate and operating at Belmont Park: All Sources Handle.
Though they were acutely aware that New York State’s COVID-19 protocols prevented spectators from attending professional sporting events, NYRA officials projected that handle on Saratoga racing would be stronger than on 40 days at Belmont. The early returns are showing they were correct. The opening day handle was up 21% from the rainy Saratoga opener in 2019. The first weekend, a total of four days, showed a 9.4% increase. The trend continued on Wednesday, the first day of the second week, with a jump of 38%.
Tony Allevato, the Chief Revenue Officer & President of NYRA Bets, said officials spent a lot of time considering whether it made sense to add the expense of opening Saratoga Race Course for the 152nd season of Thoroughbred racing in the city.
“From a management standpoint we got together with the horsemen and talked about it, looking at the Saratoga brand and what it means to racing. It’s the best in Thoroughbred racing,” he said. “When you think of Saratoga, you think of premier horse racing. I think it was important to maintain that season and have the racing come up here, knowing that it would be reflective in the numbers, in our opinion. The same race at Belmont would generate more handle and more money back to the industry if that race was run at Saratoga versus Belmont.”
Allevato said confidence in the power of Saratoga was borne out by the handle numbers during the first year of an exclusive television deal with Fox Sports and the MSG networks. Saratoga’s opening four days had a combined handle of $80.3 million, nearly double the final four days of the Belmont meet, which generated a combined handle of $41.4 million.
“I would not say we were surprised,” Allevato said. “We were reassured that we were doing the right thing, is the way to put it.”
However, noting that the stats have been solid, Allevato said it is too early to celebrate.
“We are living in a time where you can plan a lot, but things seem to change every two weeks,” he said. “You are always trying to be cautious and this move up here, just like the move that we made on the television side, there is always some risk involved with what we’re doing.”
Allevato, a California native, brought a deep resume of experience in racing and television sports with him to NYRA in 2016. Since his arrival, he has overseen the development and growth of the company’s advance deposit wagering platform, NYRA Bets, and its television programming. In 2016, the inaugural season of Saratoga Live had 80 hours of national broadcast time on the Fox Sports Network’s FS2 channel. Last year, the total grew to 190 hours. This year, the partnership expanded again, as NYRA left the long-established racing channel TVG for the commitment to Fox and MSG and 700 hours of live national TV exposure. The package includes America’s Day at the Races, as well as NYRA and Churchill Downs racing. Fox’s main sports channel, FS1 will carry 32 hours of Saratoga Live and the G1 Runhappy Travers will be shown live in a 90-minute program on Fox on Aug. 8.
Allevato worked for TVG for 14 years earlier in his career and said he had a strong relationship with the channel
“Any time that you are going to move away from a significant partner like that there is always going to be some kind of risk,” he said. “For us, the reason that we went exclusive this year with Fox, it was about being able to showcase New York Racing and our content and our horses and our horsemen on a national scale. It really came down to numbers in terms of programming. If you look at our shows we show two races an hour from New York. If Churchill is running we’ll show four races an hour, which is a race every 15 minutes.
“When we are on TVG we’re sharing the spotlight with sometimes five other race tracks. For us, it was important to try and get as much time around our signal. We are the New York Racing Association. We are very biased, but we think our racing is the best racing in the country. And we feel that it deserves 60 minutes of every hour in terms of coverage and that’s what we have been able to provide by being on Fox.
Moreover, Allevato said that the Fox deal has the potential to expand racing’s audience.
“By being on a mainstream sports network we are giving the sport an opportunity to reach out to new fans, something that horse racing has been preaching for decades and decades that needed to be done,” he said. “NYRA has now taken that step.
“We will be coming out of all different types of sporting events, whether it’s soccer games, baseball, NASCAR, you name it, we are capturing eyeballs that aren’t traditionally watching horse racing. With sports betting now growing across the country it’s a critical time for horse racing to get that crossover fan. We feel like the shows give us the best opportunity to expose those people to what we feel is the best racing in the country. With all the technology we have all the cameras, we are showing them a product that looks like a major league sporting event. We don’t see any scenario where that is bad for horse racing.”
Still, Allevato said there were questions about whether it was the right move to leave TVG, the go-to racing channel in the U.S.
“There was some criticism when we made the decision by a small number of people that there would be an inconvenience for viewers who would have to find the network,” he said. “Sometimes we are on multiple Fox networks. One day we might be on for two hours on FS2 and then the rest of the day on FS1. For me, as a person who watches sports television, if I want to watch an event I find it. I think the inconvenience, if it exists, is a 30-second inconvenience in terms of locating where it’s at.”
At the same time, every NYRA race is available every day in HD on NYRA’s YouTube channel, which is also shown on the TDN homepage.
“There are multiple ways for people to see the show,” Allevato said. “We are exposing horse racing to more eyeballs than ever. It’s pretty significant. While there were some complaints, we had a pretty long list of all the positives that came out of us being on Fox. One thing that was missing is that people who were criticizing us were working under the false assumption that Fox would still be giving us all these hours if we were non-exclusive. That was not the case.”
Allevato said that NYRA was building it television department before he arrived and that it has committed to investing in TV and its ADW platform.
“Technology is always going to come. If you try to avoid it, it’s going to run you over,” he said. “From a horse racing standpoint, we have embraced technology. It started 20 years ago with the advent of advanced deposit wagering. At the time, people looked at it as a way to keep people away from the races. Now, fast forward 20 years later, imagine where horse racing would be today during in this pandemic if there was no advanced deposit wagering. Literally, the sport would be dead. Horse racing has put themselves in a position where they can at least continue and operate during these difficult times.”
The increasing television exposure has helped the NYRA Bets business. Allevato said that new accounts are up 150% over last year. With that fact in mind, the NYRA programming approach is aimed at embracing new and seasoned fans.
“It’s a very intimidating sport for people who are just tuning in for the first time,” he said. “That’s what we really pride ourselves on trying to do that and make it as accessible for the average person. We do a lot of free-to-play things for people who watch the shows. We do a lot of offers for new customers that are low introductory offers to get them engaged. And we really try to make it as user-friendly as possible.
“It’s interesting with all the sign-ups and all the additional people that are betting the average amount being bet per customer is down, year over year, which is a really positive thing, if that makes sense. So we have more people betting but they don’t bet as much per person. That’s because we’ve got that more casual fan that is playing now.”
Once NYRA was given permission to re-open at Belmont in early June, Allevato and the other executives came to the conclusion that Saratoga, even without fans in the stands, was better for business than continuing on at Belmont Park.
“Looking at the numbers that we’ve seen so far, that would seem to solidify our beliefs,” he said. “There is also the TV element of this, as well. The entire industry has now become television and internet viewing. There is something about Saratoga from a historic standpoint–not taking anything away from Belmont Park–but there is that certain appeal that it has crosses over to that mainstream sports fan. That was the opinion we had going in. Nothing we have seen so far, granted we are one week into the meet, would suggest that we were incorrect in that thinking.”
The post Handle Off to Strong Start at Spa with Help of Increased TV Exposure appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.
Since 1973, when the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association began designating the best American stakes as Grade 1, 2 or 3, no trainer has won his first 100 Grade 1 races – the sport's most prestigious – faster than Chad Brown.
Brown registered his first Grade 1 victory on July 30, 2011, when Zagora won the Diana at Saratoga. His 100th came less than nine years later, on July 11, 2020, when Guarana won the Madison Stakes at Keeneland. The four-time (2016-'19) Eclipse Award winner as outstanding trainer added his 101st Grade 1 win that same afternoon when Rushing Fall took the Jenny Wiley at Keeneland.
Thirty years earlier, D. Wayne Lukas put the pedal to the metal almost as quickly as Brown would do, winning his first Grade 1 with Codex in the Santa Anita Derby March 30, 1980, and crossing the 100 mark a little over nine years later. Lukas is the all-time leader by Grade 1 wins, with 219, followed by Bob Baffert, who won his first Grade 1 with Thirty Slews in the 1992 Breeders' Cup Sprint. Baffert didn't reach 100 Grade 1s until 2010, although he has been the most productive trainer at the Grade 1 level in the last decade, winning 111 in the U.S. from 2010 until the present. He is second behind Lukas, with 207.
At 41 years old, Brown is the youngest trainer to reach the century mark in Grade 1 victories.
Based on available data compiled from Equibase, only seven trainers have exceeded 100 American Grade 1 victories in their careers.
They are:
Wayne Lukas…219
Bob Baffert…207
Robert Frankel…171
Todd Pletcher…158
Charles Whittingham…138
Shug McGaughey…129
William Mott…122
Chad Brown…101
Caveats: The list does not include Grade/Group 1 victories in Dubai, Europe or Asia. Because Equibase does not list any graded stakes prior to 1976 on trainer profiles, Ron McAnally (with 94 from 1976 to present) may be the ninth trainer to make that list. For the purposes of the above list, stakes results for Charlie Whittingham from 1973-'75 were taken from the Jay Hovdey biography, “Whittingham: The Story of a Thoroughbred Racing Legend,” and added to what Equibase includes on his trainer profile page. Not included are pre-1973 races that would become Grade 1 fixtures once grading of stakes began.
Brown, a native of Mechanicville, N.Y., has come a long way in a short time since saddling his first winner, Dual Jewels, in a $5,000 claiming race at Churchill Downs on Nov. 23, 2007. His first graded stakes winner came in 2008 when Maram won the Grade 3 Miss Grillo. The filly would give Brown his first Breeders' Cup victory later that year while winning the inaugural Juvenile Fillies Turf, a race would that would become a Grade 1 in 2012. It was the first of his 15 Breeders' Cup championship races.
Brown was accustomed to working with Grade 1 winners years before he hung out his shingle as a public trainer, having worked for two Hall of Famers, Shug McGaughey and Bobby Frankel. The latter spent much of his career dominating the claiming ranks, but once he proved what he could do with good horses, there was no looking back. Frankel was voted Eclipse Awards as outstanding trainer five times (1993, 2000-'03) and inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.
Brown was an assistant to Frankel in 2003 when the latter established an all-time record for most Grade 1 victories in a single year: 25.
“It seemed like we were winning Grade 1s every week,” said Brown, who spent time that year with Frankel strings at Hollywood Park in California and Belmont Park in New York. “We had a murderer's row of great horses, and I learned a lot. It was hard to believe all these horses were in the same barn. You try to take it all in, every day. He and Humberto (longtime Frankel assistant Humberto Ascanio) trained you to be so focused on your task every day.
“I remember Frankel carefully managing each horse individually,” Brown said. “It's where I started to learn about managing horses at the top end, how he did it on an individual basis, and recognizing how important it is to do it that way. We were winning Grade 1s on dirt, turf, long, short, male, female, young and very old. It really stuck with me to really pay attention every day, every hour, every minute.
“Bobby was a perfectionist. He set high goals for himself and had an incredible feel for horses and animals in general. The other thing with Bobby that I saw in managing horses was this: Anyone can say I wish I had that guy's or that girl's horses. But when you have them, you find out they're not all easy. With Bobby, when I say I learned so much, the one thing I feel I have in common is imagination. Bobby had an imagination to see into the future, how things were going to turn out. When you train horses at this level, that would be a common trait, that you have an imagination.
“Ghostzapper was not always a great work horse,” Brown said. “Bobby knew that this was the best horse he ever trained. He said it all the time, before that horse became who he was. I couldn't figure it out, not until the Iselin, when he finally showed how good he was.” The Grade 3 Philip H. Iselin, Ghostzapper's eighth career start and his second race at 4 when he was voted Horse of the Year, was followed by Grade 1 victories in 2004 in the Woodward, Breeders' Cup Classic and the 2005 Met Mile.
“I caught him at the perfect time,” Brown said of Frankel. “He had the best horses and he was the smartest trainer. I was a huge beneficiary.”
Fast forward to the present, where Brown has applied the many lessons learned from Frankel, who died in 2009.
“Our system, our roster of horses has been built over time to compete in all categories,” he said. “I want to be able to individually train and manage horses across the board. Frankel was very rare to be able to do that.”
Has Brown set Frankel's single-season record of 25 Grade 1 victories as a goal for his stable?
“I am a goal-oriented person, just conceptually to motivate me and my team to try and get somewhere, not for personal recognition or satisfaction,” he said. “We try to do better than in the previous year. That record did cross my mind the last two years, only because it was Bobby. When we got to the high teens, I thought we had a chance. I always thought this was a record that no one could ever hit, but then I saw a couple of scenarios: if, if, if …”
Each year Brown maxed out at 20 Grade 1 victories.
With all the disruptions to racing in 2020 from the coronavirus pandemic (including several Grade 1 races not being run), it's highly unlikely anyone will approach Frankel's record this year.
But success begets success, and Brown has a steady pipeline of high-end racing prospects and proven imports coming his way from some of the sport's leading owners.
In a sense, he's just getting warmed up.
“I'm lucky to have an amazing team,” said Brown. “We've built a talented roster of teammates, co-workers. It's pretty obvious that it's a team effort.”
The post Chad Brown’s First 100 Grade 1 Wins: Individual Management, Imagination Fuel Meteoric Rise appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
