008 - Racing Review - Travers at Saratoga - August 24, 2024

hello anybody and thanks for tuning in to Monday morning handicapping this is a racing review edition of the Travers that took place today at Saratoga August 24th 2024 grade one event for three-year-olds going a and a quarter and we'll look at my pick um talk about how I thought the race was going to go watch the race and then the key takeaways after seeing the race and in hindsight so what I projected was maybe a three to five horse duel somewhat for the lead um all vying for the lead getting up front somewhere so I projected the pace to be about 23 seconds to the first quarter around 46 and A2 to the second a minute 10 and a half minute 10 and change to the 3/4 around a 13 36 mile and a 2minute 1 second finishing time um I especially thought the three and the five would duel for the lead also going up near the lead the 17 and the eight I thought my top pick number four corporate power 15 to1 on the morning line ended up going off at 19 to1 would sit about fourth or fifth maybe four lengths back from the leaders down on the rail get a nice ground saving trip um and just hope that the Front Runners that all dueled for that early lead just get tired late and um my four could save ground and run past him as they got tired but let's take a look at the race see how it went and uh we'll talk about it as it goes on and what I'm looking for so here's my four get a little antsy in the gate but comes out bumps the three little kind of gets pinched by the three and the five here's where I so now he shuffled back to the back a little further back than I thought three gets out in front of him sort of blocking him he's boxed in right now I definitely thought the three would go to the lead with the five and uh didn't cuz it's sier Leon stable mate who's a deep closer my horse gets bumped there going into the turn so already off to a bad start there's not the duel that I thought a half second slower I projected closer to 23 Flat for the first quarter mile and this five is all by himself the one in the seven who I thought would be or the yeah one in the seven who I thought would be up near the lead more um or on the lead taken back a length length and a half fierceness took back even further the eight horse and the three again to my surprise um really thought he was going to be a rabbit for the two to ensure a faster Pace 48 to the half mile I thought it'd be much quicker 46 and change maybe 47 my horse my jockey already asking him to pick it up not making up any ground bad start but he also got way behind some better horses early so it's going to be hard to run them down 111 and a half about a second slower than I was uh projecting um maybe I should have maybe I should have thought about the mile and a quarter a little bit more and projected that these jockeys wouldn't overly exert their horses um in a big race like this and more of them would take back than I thought or what looked on paper and here's my horse in the back no chance jockey I don't even think's asking anymore one of the favorites that sat right off of that 29 to1 lone leader just passes by and goes on it looks like the Philly taking on the boys that's going to pass him here but fierceness hangs on tough another few strides and I think the Philly does pass him but um 2 minutes and one almost almost 2 minutes and 2 seconds total time I projected about 2 minutes and one so the final time was about what I thought but the fractions earlier were a bit slower so that enables The Front Runners to be a little bit less tired so not quite the speed duel that I was expecting um you know on paper the jockey read the forms too so they know what the horses are going to do and um if they think um a lesser horse is going to go to the lead I should pay more attention that some of them will opt to take back even if they are on a stone cold front runner um like many of them did this race it looked like more speed on paper um maybe I overanalyzed maybe the jockey also um just tactically didn't want to get into that kind of speed duel anyways after watching that um some of my key takeaways from my pick the four was it was a real steep Step Up in class this horse was facing much better better than it's ever faced in its uh short career three workouts and nine days especially with the bullet the fastest workout of any horse on that track going that distance most recent maybe too many workouts and too strenuous of workouts within a short period of time before such a big race again the poor start uh got way behind the better horses um I don't know that it would have made a difference today he just the other horses just came with their aame today um but yeah poor start never helps especially when facing so much better this was the first time my four horse was going this distance and again facing better who had gone this distance so trying something new facing better also a negative and just simply did not improve off his last figure his best race of his life was last race and I thought maybe if he improved second off a layoff um he could be in the mix and also a key takeaway is when I do these videos to focus on sort of gun to the Head who's going to win and quit getting too cute with trying to pick a long shot I might even start handicapping and blocking out the morning line just so that doesn't sway me and I try to pick a horse that no one else is thinking about I heard some chatter on podcast about the horse so I don't totally regret the pick but after watching it run there are plenty of takeaways to where gun to the head again I probably would not have picked him to win I will eventually come across horse that are odds and I'll feel more genuine about them but focus on winners and not the odds so I hope nobody tailed that it was a very uneventful race got a lot of key takeaways stuff to think about again on a lot of these racing preview and review videos I'm looking at Big races so a lot of horses I'm not super familiar with a lot of tracks I'm not super familiar with just because I like to play my local circuit in Northern California more but um it's fun to do this fun to learn I hope someone else got something from it um leave a comment let me know if there's anything different I should do or focus on but anyways with that said on to the next one thanks for watching good luck anybody and hit like And subscribe thanks again [Music]