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.
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