SARATOGA SPRINGS – A pair of stakes will be run here today – the Grade 2, $200,000 Alfred G. Vanderbilt at six furlongs and the Grade 1, $500,000 Sword Dancer at a mile-and-a-half on turf – but for this afternoon, at least, the Old Spa takes a backseat to Arlington Park, which boasts three Grade 1 grass races on the card: the mile-and-a-quarter Arlington Million, the $750,000 Beverly D. for fillies and mares at a mile-and-three-sixteenths, and the $400,000 Secretariat for 3-year-olds at a mile-and-a-quarter.
A $400,000 guaranteed “NTRA National Pick 4” is being offered (ABC, 4-6 p.m.) with a minimum $1 bet, beginning with the Vanderbilt (post time 4:15), followed by the Beverly D., Sword Dancer and Million. Here’s our $1 part-wheel ticket that costs $48 ($1x2x4x2x3):
Vanderbilt: Kelly’s Landing is coming off a track-record (1:07.2) score in the Aristides at Churchill Downs and blew out for this in a bullet :46.3 Monday over the Saratoga main track. Mike Smith flies in to ride. Pomeroy took the King’s Bishop over this track last summer and won his last by 6½ lengths at Monmouth. Use them both.
Beverly D.: This group could be the best ever assembled for this race. Megahertz has won all three of her starts this year in California for trainer Bobby Frankel, who also saddles the once-beaten 3-year-old filly Melhor Ainda. Wend, who goes for Mott-Bailey, is riding a five-race winning streak, while Wonder Again, who scratched out of Saratoga’s Diana Handicap to await this spot, gets the soft turf course she loves. Use all four.
Sword Dancer: In a race without much pace over a turf course that’s been playing to speed, Frankel’s King’s Drama should be loose on the lead under Jorge Chavez, who snapped a long losing streak in winning yesterday’s sixth race. The distance, however, is a question mark. Meteor Storm looks like the one horse in the field who can lay close to King’s Drama, he’s proven at a mile-and-a-half and has been pointing for this spot. Use them both.
Arlington Million: You could say Kitten’s Joy, America’s reigning turf champion, who won the Secretariat over this course last summer in record time and is 9-for-11 on the lawn with two seconds, is a good horse to single. You could have said the same thing in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Turf, when he ran second at 3-5. So also use the horse that beat him in that race, Better Talk Now, and Irish invader Powerscourt, who was disqualified after finishing first in last year’s Million in a very controversial decision.