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Tom Law 
Alfred Nuckols Jr. knows every inch of every horse in his six-horse consignment.
As hands-on as hands-on can be, Nuckols delivered each one as a foal at his farm in Midway, Ky., and was there when they were led off a horse van in Saratoga Springs Friday morning.
Prospective buyers hit the Fasig-Tipton sales grounds hard Saturday, especially in the approximately three-hour window between the end of training and the start of racing at Saratoga Race Course. A few minutes after training wrapped up at 10 a.m. the Hurstland Farm consignment is hopping.
Hurst Nuckols got his father’s attention just as he returned from a short mid-morning walk to Leo O’Brien’s barn on the Oklahoma Training Track, pointed to the screen and the occupant of the corner stall and succinctly summed up the situation.
The gray horse ambles in the distance, a speck of color sliding across the dark backdrop of pine trees, like a painter had flicked a brush across his canvass, a start of something big. Walking southeast along the horse path, he turns right, walks onto the training track at Greentree and picks up a jog, a languid jog, back toward the long white, open-air barn and around the turn to the straightaway where 11 people wait for him. The group includes trainer, an assistant, a writer, a photographer and a few lucky fans who just fell into their best morning at the track.
Strike Midnight and Isotherm share a lot in common. Two dark bay or brown colts with five career starts, exiting runner-up efforts in each of their last races. They’re also described by respective trainers Leah Gyarmati and George Weaver as strong and tough while training and demonstrating tactical speed during their races. Above all, they’ll both contest today’s $200,000 Grade 2 National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame Stakes.
In his Saratoga Race Course debut last week, Liam Benson saddled No So Quiet Man to a runner-up finish behind the Bill Mott-trained House Of Friends. In today’s $100,000 Quick Call Stakes, the 21-year-old trainer and University of Louisville student hopes to finish ahead of the Hall of Famer and the other conditioners with a starter in the 5 1/2-furlong turf sprint.
Ignacio Correas walked to the main track Tuesday morning, took care of some business back home in Kentucky on the phone, talked about his chances in today’s $100,000 Shine Again, Kasaqui’s even bigger task in next week’s Arlington Million and compared it all to the place he was in a little more than a year ago.
The sun starts to overpower the fading night sky and the birds welcome the start of a new day near the boundary of the main track at Saratoga Race Course and Godolphin’s Greentree Training Center just after 5:30 Friday morning.
Hannah Ashcroft was standing by the picnic table outside of Graham Motion’s barn at Saratoga Race Course last week, rubbing conditioner into a leather halter with a sponge. From the table you could see horses galloping by on the track, and in the not-so-distant distance, the grandeur of the Saratoga grandstand presided over the entire scene.
As she leaned her back on a railing outside the office of trainer Joe Sharp’s barn on the Oklahoma Training Track Wednesday morning, Dede McGehee was tired from the trip to New York from her home in Lexington, even more so after a stop in Brooklyn to visit her daughter.
