Belmont Friday

In the 7th at Belmont, Hyman Roth (8-1) is a three-year old son of Street Boss who has surely found a home on grass after floundering on dirt early this year, with three wins from five attempts.   And he's shown versatility in doing so, winning on the lead and from a couple lengths off the pace.  Though his TimeformUS speed figures are surely a cut below those of top contenders such as Karakorum Legend (2-1 poe), Sandy'z Slew (7-2) and Ziptronic (5-1), he is going in the right direction, with improved numbers in each of his grass starts.


Might have made even more progress in that last race at Saratoga too with a better trip.  Breaking from the rail, Hyman Roth quickly found himself pinned inside towards the back of the pack.  Seemingly eager to make some progress from there, he was stymied when forced to steady around the first turn.  He remained towards the rear before mounting a mild late rally into a quick closing quarter, coming home himself in a snappy 23.03, best in the field, to be 4th.  Further compromising his chances to improve on that finish was the fact that the turf courses seemed to be firmly favoring speed at that point in the Saratoga meeting.  Cuts back to seven furlongs today; a distance at which he is one-for-one on grass, and that win came from off the pace.  He'll have to utilize that strategy today with speedier types such as the abovementioned Ziptronic and Sandy'z Slew, as well as Thunder Harbor (6-1) in the mix.  If Jose Ortiz can indeed harness his speed, can be close should he continue his progression of improvement.

In the 8th, Chasing Moonlight (6-1) goes first time off the claim for an obscure, and winless in 2013, trainer in Juan Ortiz.  Gelded son of Grand Slam was a fruitful 14K claim for Dominic Galluscio, with a win and a second in three starts.  Furthermore, he improved speed-wise, earning a career high TFUS figure of 101, which is the best in 2013 of any horse in the field.  Obvious questions are whether he can run back to that effort just seven days later, and whether he can be successful beyond six furlongs at today's distance of seven.  A winning effort off of eight days rest in March would seem to answer affirmatively to the first question; the latter remains to be seen.  But would be worth his morning line price to find out, and we like that jockey Luis Saez sticks around for the new connections.  Best of luck and have a great day.

 - We have a TimeformUS Breeders' Cup Package which will be available with the release of the advanced past performances on October 23.  Besides our usual great features with foreign runners - highly detailed race commentary for most entrants and speed figures for which a great deal of work has been done on both sides of the Atlantic in order to bring into a harmonized scale for easy comparison - it includes expert European commentary on the foreign runners (as well as the usual stellar domestic work) delivered to your inbox, and unlimited past performance access to all tracks on Breeders' Cup Friday and Saturday.  Details on the package can be found here.

[UPDATE: And I'll be doing a new feature on the TimeformUS blog called Today in Racing; first post up here.]