Weekend Lineup Presented By NYRA Bets: Grade 1 Sprinters To Line Up On Both Coasts

A pair of Grade 1 sprints on opposite coasts highlight this Saturday's stakes action, with the G1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt taking place at Saratoga and the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar. In addition, juvenile champion and Belmont Stakes winner Essential Quality will return to action in the G2 Jim Dandy Stakes at the Spa, and 2020 Kentucky Oaks winner Shedaresthedevil will ship west to contest Sunday's G1 Clement Hirsch.

The Vanderbilt features reigning sprint champion Whitmore seeking his first win of his 8-year-old campaign, while Firenze Fire will attempt to turn the tables after finishing third behind Whitmore in last year's Breeders' Cup Sprint. Morning-line favoritism goes to Michevious Alex, the G1-winning sprinter who shortens back up to six furlongs after running third in the Met Mile.

Meanwhile, the Bing Crosby offers a deep field of nine including divisional leader C Z Rocket. After twice defeating Whitmore at Oaklawn Park over the winter, C Z Rocket will race without Lasix for the first time in his career during this “Win and You're In” contest for the Breeders' Cup Sprint.

The New York Racing Association Inc. (NYRA) will host a Cross Country Pick 5 on Saturday featuring action from historic Saratoga Race Course as well as competition from Woodbine Racetrack and Monmouth Park.

Here's a quick snapshot of this weekend's graded stakes schedule (all times Eastern):

Saturday

5:03 p.m. – $350,000 Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt H. at Saratoga

Champion Whitmore faces eight rivals in this spot, most notably Grade 1 winners Firenze Fire and Mischevious Alex, both of whom are listed at lower odds on the morning line. Special Reserve has been facing lesser company but has won four of his five starts this season, while live longshot Lexitonian ran extremely well to finish second in his last start at six furlongs, in the G1 Churchill Downs Stakes, and returns to the sprint scene after a poor start and sixth-place finish in the Met Mile.

Vanderbilt Entries

5:39 p.m. – $600,000 Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga

Essential Quality has done little wrong thus far in his career, and it would take a monster effort from one of the five rivals in this race to defeat him on Saturday. That said, Masqueparade is an improving sort for the very patient Al Stall, Jr., and Weyburn being entered in this race instead of the Plate Trial (he's Ontario-bred) should say something about what trainer Jimmy Jerkens thinks of his chances. Keepmeinmind would benefit from a hot pace up front, should one develop.

Jim Dandy Entries

6:12 p.m. – $250,000 G2 Bowling Green Stakes at Saratoga

Three sons of English Channel make up three of the top four choices on the morning line in the Bowling Green, a 1 3/8-mile contest over the Saratoga lawn. Channel Maker is the favorite, making his first start since running a big second in Saudi Arabia's Neom Turf Cup and then finishing off the board a month later in Dubai; the Bill Mott trainee, one of three in this race, was third in this race last year and usually seems to hit his best form around the fall. The ever-dangerous Chad Brown enters a pair in Rockemperor and Breakpoint, while the red-hot Mike Maker has New York-bred Cross Border in with a chance.

Bowling Green Entries

9:30 p.m. – $300,000 G1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar

Even if C Z Rocket proves he can run without Lasix, it may not be enough to secure him the victory in this “Win and You're In” contest for the Breeders' Cup Sprint this fall. Eight others are signed on for the six-furlong affair, with a trio from the barn of Mark Glatt including last year's winner, Collusion Illusion. Brickyard Ride will try to steal the race on the front end, while the Glatt-trained Dr. Schivel would seem likeliest to take advantage of a hot early pace.

Bing Crosby Entries

Sunday

5:39 p.m. – $200,0000 G2 Amsterdam Stakes at Saratoga

Restricted to 3-year-olds, the Amsterdam features a rematch between Drain the Clock and Jackie's Warrior, the 1-2 finishers separated by a neck last out in the G1 Woody Stephens. They'll have a sixteenth of a mile less to travel this time, which should give the advantage to the speedy and determined Jackie's Warrior as his Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen approaches Dale Baird's all-time leading trainer record.

Amsterdam Entries

9:00 p.m. – $300,000 G1 Clement Hirsch at Del Mar

Kentucky Oaks winner Shedaresthedevil ships in from Ellis Park to contest the 1 1/16-mile Hirsch for trainer Brad Cox, chasing the expenses-paid berth to the Breeders' Cup Distaff granted to the winner. The regally-bred local divisional leader As Time Goes By, an American Pharoah half-sister to Will Take Charge and Take Charge Indy, will enter off a two-race win streak for trainer Bob Baffert. Venetian Harbor has won a pair of graded stakes races sprinting in the past year, but stretches out here, and Warren's Showtime switches to the dirt after winning the G3 Wilshire last out.

Hirsch Entries

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TVG: Live Coverage Of Del Mar’s ‘Win And You’re In’ Races, Launch Of Old Friends Promotion

The road to the Breeders' Cup runs through California this weekend with two Breeders' Cup Challenge “Win and You're In” races and TVG, America's horse racing network, will be broadcasting live from Del Mar featuring the $300,000 Bing Crosby Stakes (G1) on Saturday and the $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes (G1) on Sunday.

A broadcast team including Todd Schrupp, Christina Blacker, Britney Eurton, Joaquin Jaime, Mike Joyce and Scott Hazelton will be trackside with exclusive interviews, insights and handicapping selections.

Saturday's $300,000 Bing Crosby (G1), which will earn the winner a spot in the starting gate for the Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1), has drawn a field of nine of some of the fastest sprinters in the country including graded stakes winner C Z Rocket for trainer Peter Miller. The 7-year-old gelding was second in the 2020 edition of the Breeders' Cup Sprint and will have Flavien Prat aboard.

Sunday's featured $300,000 Clement L. Hirsch Stakes (G1) has drawn a field of seven fillies and mares vying for a berth in the Breeders' Cup Distaff (G1). The contenders include Shedaresthedevil, the 2020 Kentucky Oaks (G1) heroine for trainer Brad Cox. A four-year-old daughter of Daredevil, she will be ridden by Florent Geroux as she tries to earn her third victory of the year.

The Breeders' Cup will be held November 5-6 at Del Mar.

Thursday will also mark the beginning of a month-long partnership with Old Friends, a popular equine retirement facility in Kentucky that is home to retired champions including Silver Charm, Alphabet Soup and Game on Dude.

Any existing account holder that refers a friend to sign up and make a deposit before the end of August will receive a $50 referral bonus and TVG will make a $50 donation to Old Friends for each referral received.

It was announced on Friday that the TVG Pacific Classic (G1), scheduled for August 21, will get a purse increase back to its original level of $1 million. The TVG Pacific Classic is a Breeders' Cup “Win and You're In” race for the Breeders' Cup Classic (G1).

In addition to racing from Del Mar, TVG will also be featuring Monmouth Park, Gulfstream Park, Pimlico and more. Fans can tune in on TVG, TVG2 and the Watch TVG app which is available on Amazon Fire, Roku and connected Apple TV devices.

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This Side Up: Old Stagers Keep Us to the Script

Though divided by a continent, the Grade I sprints on either coast Saturday have an evocative bond that opens a far less navigable gulf between the golden era they preserve, and our own drab times. For each honors an icon of American glamor in the last century–and if a day at Saratoga or Del Mar retains a certain magic, in 2021, then that's partly because we can almost still sense the smiling, shimmering presence of Alfred G. Vanderbilt and Bing Crosby, respectively.

The prestige and panache contributed by these gentlemen to the heyday of the Turf lingers even against popular inattention or distaste today. Obviously they rode very different trails to the social summit: one the scion of capitalist royalty, the other a son of a Spokane bookkeeper. But both shared a conviction that the heartbeat of the sport–in an era when it truly enjoyed mass appeal–was measured not so much in its bluebloods as among its blue-collar fans.

Crosby, as founding father, famously manned the turnstiles for Del Mar's opening day in 1937. And Vanderbilt, who took over Pimlico the following year, would sometimes plunge into the crowd incognito to sample their experience, and recount any dissatisfactions at the next board meeting.

Though unshaven and tieless, it's surprising nobody recognized him: “Say, don't I know you? You're Jimmy Stewart!” The resemblance, an enviable one of course, was quite uncanny. Stewart would seal his rise with The Philadelphia Story (1940), the screwball classic which burdens the 1956 musical remake, High Society, with a nearly insurmountable air of desecration. In this version the patrician sportsman C.K. Dexter Haven, originally played by Cary Grant, was awkwardly reprised by Crosby as a jazz composer. To be fair, a similar anomaly was even then being achieved just down the road, where the producer John Hammond–whose mother actually was a Vanderbilt–had helped to set up the Newport Jazz Festival. But if that was an exercise in bringing proletarian culture to the plutocrats, then the reverse challenge was being embraced by Vanderbilt and Crosby: how to achieve public engagement with the sporting rivalry of millionaires?

Both came up with a very similar answer. They recognized how the Thoroughbred, though the ultimate emblem of pedigree, could transcend class. And that was how both Vanderbilt and Crosby featured as impresarios in the saga of the Depression hero Seabiscuit.

Crosby's partner in Binglin Stable, Lindsay Howard, was the son of Seabiscuit's owner Charles S. Howard, himself a founding director of Del Mar alongside Crosby. In 1938, only its second year of operation, together they posted a $25,000 match between Seabiscuit and Binglin's Argentinian import Ligaroti. Crosby went into Hollywood overdrive and the place was packed out. A section of the clubhouse was roped off for those rooting for his horse, while Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey were among the hundreds brandishing pennants in the Binglin colors. In a finish of notorious rough riding, Seabiscuit won by a nose.

Del Mar had put itself on the map. But that, of course, was only the prelude to Seabiscuit's showdown with War Admiral at Pimlico that November. Vanderbilt had been lobbying the owners for months. He had, in fact, just married the niece of Charles Howard's second wife, Marcela, herself the sister of Lindsay Howard's wife Anita. (Lindsay and Anita divorced soon after–and she then married Vanderbilt's brother!) Vanderbilt landed the match of the century by chasing War Admiral's owner Nelson Riddle through Penn Station and preventing him from boarding his train until he had signed the contract.

But while both understood showmanship and spectacle, Vanderbilt and Crosby first and foremost trusted the inherent narrative power of the sport. It was just a case of improving access. At Pimlico, that meant a public address system, and leveling off the mound that gave Old Hilltop a nickname but deprived its patrons of a backstretch view. A starting gate was also introduced to promote wagering confidence.

At Del Mar, meanwhile, Crosby had hired an optical engineer from Paramount Pictures to inaugurate the photo-finish camera. And he persuaded NBC to broadcast a radio show from the track every Saturday, so that celebrities could say what a splendid time they were having.

Apt, then, that Vanderbilt should have raced the sport's poster boy for the television age, Native Dancer, who made the cover of Time in 1954. And likewise that Del Mar still bookends the day with Crosby, himself a breakout star of multimedia, singing “Where The Surf Meets The Turf.”

But their real legacy is example. Yes, we face heavy challenges. But don't forget that it was between Depression and war that Vanderbilt and Crosby went out and captured imaginations with the racehorse as a conduit of hope, or at least escapism, for ordinary people.

In its essentials, the game was much as it remains today: a contest of horses and horsemen in repeating, mesmerizing circles. They didn't try to gimmick it into something different. They just swung open the theater doors and turned on the footlights. So often deplored as too arcane for an urban, 21st Century audience, the Turf is actually hugely accessible–if only you provide that access.

Many of our problems now boil down simply to whether we have or not have a show we can display with pride. Cheating trainers, for instance, don't just cheat their honest rivals and imperil the noble agents of their corruption. They also validate a sense, in the world beyond, that our community has something to hide.

Conversely, our community's nearly universal devotion to the horse needs only to be seen to be understood and, very soon, to be shared. We have all, surely, seen friends outside our business become intrigued, once the door has been prised open to them.

Admittedly the sprint division doesn't quite offer the layman the kind of slower-burning drama that tends to unfold round a second turn, but there's no lack of character development. And that's especially precious at a time when Thoroughbreds tend to be sighted about as frequently as Halley's Comet, a trend plainly inimical to fan engagement. These, in contrast, are horses on whom you can really hang your hat. Whitmore (Pleasantly Perfect) and Firenze Fire (Poseidon's Warrior) bring to the Alfred G. Vanderbilt H. a joint record of 29 wins in 75 starts for a few cents short of $7 million. I love the fact that the reigning GI Breeders' Cup Sprint winner ran in the Derby won by Nyquist. Meanwhile the 7-year-old C Z Rocket (City Zip), who chased home Whitmore at Keeneland last fall, takes his 11-for-26 record into the Bing Crosby S.

Whitmore and C Z Rocket are geldings, of course, which is one obvious reason why both should have stuck around. Thoroughbreds may be born to run but nowadays that is seldom why they are conceived. So many of them are brought into the world for a purpose that is accomplished the moment they walk out of the sale ring, yet to feel a saddle on their back.

Unfortunately, that is pretty much how some racetrack operators view their own participation in our sport–as the bottom line in a page of numbers. Crosby and Vanderbilt both had their local loyalties, on either coast, but what would men of their time and stamp think to see the home of the Derby in the hands of what appears to be primarily a gaming corporation?

No doubt the accountants cashing in another of the sport's jewels, at Arlington Park, can only see demographic disaster coming down the tracks. As Crosby sings with Frank Sinatra, in High Society: “Have you heard, it's in the stars, next July we collide with Mars?” But if horseracing becomes merely an incidental adjunct to the soulless stimulations plied to casino addicts, then the only “match of the century” we'll ever know will be the one lighting the bonfire of our heritage.

Vanderbilt and Crosby, remember, were brilliant promoters precisely because they were communicating their own excitement, their own belief. So let's get out there, while we can, and tell everyone just “what a swellegant, elegant party this is!”

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Many Chances in Deep Bing

Handicappers will have a tough time tossing many horses from their tickets as a competitive nine-horse field lines up for Saturday's six-furlong GI Bing Crosby S. at Del Mar, a “Win and You're In” qualifier for the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint.

Given a slight nod on the morning line at 5-2 is C Z Rocket (City Zip). Claimed for $40,000 last spring at Oaklawn by Peter Miller, the gelding has been a new horse since, winning seven of nine races while finishing second in the other two. That streak includes a score in last summer's GII Pat O'Brien S. over this oval. The 7-year-old most recently was second when stretching out in the GIII Steve Sexton Mile S. May 31 at Lone Star.

California-bred Brickyard Ride (Clubhouse Ride) rates a big chances breaking from the outermost stall. Earning a shot at open company after a convincing score in the California Cup Sprint S. Jan. 16 at Santa Anita, the Alfred Pais homebred didn't disappoint, cruising to an impressive four-length victory despite setting a scorching pace in the GII San Carlos S. Mar. 6. Well-beaten in his next two, he rebounded with a 4 3/4-length success in the Cal-bred Thor's Echo S. last out June 12.

Dr. Schivel (Violence) takes on older horses in just his fifth career start. Taking three tries to break his maiden, he came right back to annex the GI Runhappy Del Mar Futurity for Luis Mendez, but went unseen for over nine months after that before eventually returning with a narrow allowance/optional claiming tally for new trainer Mark Glatt June 18 at Santa Anita.

Defending Bing Crosby champion Collusion Illusion (Twirling Candy) makes his 4-year-old debut here. Runner-up in the GII Santa Anita Championship S. after his local heroics, he was 12th in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint before rebounding some to be third in the GI Runhappy Malibu S.

Other contenders include Vertical Threat (Tapiture), last seen romping by 7 1/2 lengths with a 102 Beyer in last November's Steel Valley Sprint S. at Mahoning Valley, Quick Tempo (Tapizar), who did his name justice when setting splits of :21.44 and :43.35 before setting for second in the Iowa Sprint S. at Prairie Meadows July 3, and Eight Rings (Empire Maker), who's winless in four starts since capturing the GI American Pharoah S. as a juvenile but shows a sharp worktab for Bob Baffert that includes a five-furlong bullet in :58 3/5 (1/91) July 10 in Arcadia.

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