Mo Pletcher

- Nice weekend for Jose Santos, who has been struggling to even get mounts at Saratoga. It's a tough jockey colony there to be sure. But he rode War Front to victory in the G2 Alfred Vanderbilt at Saratoga on Saturday. On Sunday, he traveled to Monmouth to win the Monmouth BC Oaks with the badly named Mo Cuishle (muh kwish-la according to Bloodhorse, but mo kush-la according to Monmouth announcer Larry Collmus). I have to say that I wasn't familiar with this filly, and when I looked her up in the Form, big surprise to see that it's Pletcher, again. Santos has to be thrilled to be riding for him, and I'm sure he would have gone to Beirut to ride her if he had to.

But I think Jose is most certainly getting a bit ahead of himself when he talked about her championship aspirations. Not to say that she can't go on, but so far, she's won two races at Delaware, and beat a not-that-great field in this stakes.

Pletcher was back at Saratoga on Sunday, but he was very much hands-on in this race. "Todd called me at 8:30 this morning and said to be aware the track is very deep on the inside," Santos said. [Asbury Park Press]

Mo Cuishle is by the dead stallion Saint Ballado, out of a Deputy Minister mare, and her second dam is the graded stakes winner Tricky Squaw

- Eibar Coa spoke with the Saratoga Special about getting rides for the Pletcher machine after guiding the barn's Go Deputy to win the Sword Dancer.

“Unfortunately, it’s hard to get in Pletcher’s barn and it takes days like this when rides open up....I don’t ride for him too often, sometimes in the winter when Johnny isn’t around. You’ve got to stick around, they go by first, down. If the first four or five guys are out of town, they keep going down and if I maintain my position in the standings, they land on me. Hopefully, hopefully I can stay on this one, to stay on a horse like this, that’s all you need.”