Saratoga Notes

- Hammock ($17) was actually the second longest shot in the tightly competitive first race field on Wednesday. The turf was labeled good, and it was like the riders came out wary, crawling to a 52-second first half; and then were like, "hey, it's fine," and sprinted home in just around 46 seconds flat from that point. Fifth winner for Rick Schosberg (26-5-4-1); his horses have been pretty consistently live of late. He has an interesting one in the 2nd on Thursday in Piscesbymoonlight (5-1). Bred and owned by Albert Fried Jr., who also bred and owned this colt's half-brother, the nice NY-bred Giant Moon, this son of Empire Maker just failed as the favorite at a mile in April, beaten by Bigger is Bettor, who won the Albany here last week. Adds blinkers and moves confidently up to open company off a solid series of drills.

Night Maneuver ($41) won the second for Carlos Martin. That's the second debut winner for Carlos Martin, a guy not known for winning first-time out.

Kid Kate ($5.80) took the third, and that's 20 winners on the meet for trainer Chad Brown. Still 13 winners behind Pletcher, but he's started 56 less runners, and his hitting at an even 30%, pretty remarkable.

Speaking of remarkable, Count Catamount ($6.40) couldn't get out of his own way at this level under previous handling, now has a win and a narrow second since moving to the barn of trainer Rudy Rodriguez. How does he do that?

Not a good day for the Toddster. Mr. Style, grossly overbet to .45 - 1 off an inflated Beyer in a suck-along-for-second performance in his debut (no redboarding here, pointed that out in the last post, even if the horse I mentioned was eased and walked off), ran well but was edged by Officer Prado ($9.40) after a race-long duel. First of two winners on the day for Asmussen, and that's 13 winners from just 40 starters for that barn. And Crazy Party was out of the money for Pletcher at 4-5 in the PG Johnson.

Asmussen's second winner, Yadira ($13.40), made a flawless transition to the ranks of winners one race after graduating earlier in the meet. Took a while to get this daughter of Pulpit to the races; debuted this year at age four, two years after bringing $575,000 as a two-year old in training. She's a half-sister to a couple of grass stakes winners in Dilemma and Capitano.

- So much for the "everyman" thing? According to this chat room site, Ken Rudulph will be leaving TVG following the Del Mar meet.

[Confirmed. You'd think they could have gotten the spelling of his name right in the headline?