7/25: Saratoga (Day 7; Curlin)

[ScottJ]

Originally Posted by pointman

Just curious, if the Saratoga jockey colony is not top flight, what colony is?

Exchange Javier Castellano and Cornelio Velasquez in that third race and the results are different. Many feel that watching the jockeys is unimportant at Saratoga and I tend to disagree greatly. Hence, my comment regarding interchanging those particular third race pilots.

As for the strength of the colony, I have always agreed that these (along with Del Mar's group) are very talented; that said, it is fairly clear that few if any can adequately judge pace and internal fractions in a race which is a major gap in their arsenal. If I have this wrong, why do we see so much discussion about NYRA-disease - also known as "clutch and grab"?