Saturday Morning Notes

- Quick post before we had upstate for an overnight trip. Got up early this morning and headed for Belmont. Man, what a beautiful morning. I caught a glimpse of the Tactical Cat colt galloping on the training track, and got to briefly meet Billy Turner and his wife Pat, who galloped the colt and seemed extremely pleased. I have this crummy picture, in which you can’t see the horse’s head and it looks like he only has three legs; perhaps I’ll post it when I get back.

I’m hoping to be able to watch the Peter Pan today; I know our friends have Direct TV at their house. This is my friend who occasionally meets me at the Meadowlands, so I can probably get him to participate if I try. I really like Oratory (Pulpit), starting from the outside with Jerry Bailey. Trainer Tom Albertrani is enjoying a fine year, hitting at 24%, and off to a 4 for 11 start at Belmont. He hasn’t faced the quality of horses that some of the others have, so this will be a test for class. He got beat at 3-5 at 9 furlongs at Aqueduct in his last when he was 3 wide on both turns; they crawled home the last eighth in :13 4/5. But now he goes back to 1 turn, and his two such races are excellent. He came from far back and got beat a neck in his 6 furlong debut, defeating Mr. Sword, who is the only graded stakes placed horse in this field; and he drew away to beat an allowance field by 4 at a mile. I think he’s going to love this 1 turn route. Sir Greeley has an intimidating 106 Beyer in a mile allowance at the Big A; Liftin says it was the fastest mile race of the meet and that he raced on the wrong lead. His last was a quick second on the turf. This horse ran in a 25000 maiden claimer just 3 back, but has improved drastically and should be the main threat. Reverberate has a lot of familiar Derby trail names in his running lines and has also shown marked improvement his last two races, the last an allowance win at 1 1/16 at Belmont. He should be the main speed and could be tough to run down. Enjoy the races and have a great day.